If it's become amorphous, then let me (try to) steer it back on course. As mentioned earlier, I see backtesting (as part of Guardian) as being appropriate where:Euler wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:14 pmIt sort of feels like this discussion and has splintered and become a bit amorphous.
I make extensive use of historical data, but not to create a new strategy by seeing if it works by backtesting. But to model the market and understand how it works with a view to exploiting that understanding of the market.
I honestly can't think of ever having used a backtested strategy in the market cold from a set of data. I've only ever used it to understand the way the market works and look for exploitable patterns.
1. The intention is clearly understood; you are honing a system against a diverse set of markets in order to test hypothesis
2. A rule that has evolved and has worked previously begins to lose its edge. In this case, it would be great to try to find (via historical data) when and where the change has occurred. if the issue can be identified, then potentially it can be remedied.
3. A pattern has been identified but no intention has been declared. In this case, backtesting would provide insight against a defined set of rules set up to test the rigidity of this pattern (i.e - black box testing)
In short, I'm not advocating backtesting as a way to haphazerdly *find* some silver bullet. I'm rather suggesting that the hours spent looking out the window (thanks shaun ) could be better utilised by proactively troubleshooting issues with rulesets via instant recall on market replay. also, this would potentially mitigate the scores of BF account suspensions reported, due to practice mode being overused (in BF's opinion)