Topic: Consistent profitability question

Hello all,

I am new to forexsb and just pick up some basic stuff of the software. After playing with the strategy builder for a few days, I realized that I am having problems generating a consistent profitable strategy.

I do get excellent strategies with amazing rate of returns from the generator. However, when I try to apply the same strategy into different pairs or different time periods (same time frame, just newer data from MT4), i will get totally different results. Most of the excellent strategies I got turn out to be account terminators. 

I wanna know what should I do to get a strategy that generates consistent profits. Should I just keep trying generating strategies or did I do something wrong?

Thank you, and good luck with your trading.

Re: Consistent profitability question

This is the core problem of strategy development -- one sample of data works great, outside of that it reverts to nothingness. Some topics to search for:
- curve fitting (usually how to avoid curve fitting)
- edge vs random chance
- changing volatility
There are a lot of issues, those 3 are good to start searching. Most articles will state 4 or 5 issues, which provides a lead to search for the next topic, which leads to the next and on.
Hope that helps

Re: Consistent profitability question

Almost forgot -- Forex Strategy Builder has a built-in tool to help determine the Over-Optimization of a strategy. In the menu bar, click Analysis > Over-Optimization Report. It will change the parameters of your indicators by some %, then show charts of how much the results vary by changing the parameter.

Re: Consistent profitability question

Thank you so much krog, your reply helps me a lot with my trading!

Re: Consistent profitability question

One more question, i just ran a quick over-optimization analysis in the FSB and got some charts. What does the different color of lines represents? different indicators or ? I can't find the analysis section in the user manual.

Re: Consistent profitability question

I think there is a different color line for each parameter for each indicator in the strategy. Ex, if your strategy had RSI and Moving Average, it would have 3 or 4 lines:
RSI - Soothing Period, Level
Moving Average - Period, Shift
It might have Level or not, if the logic is "Above the Level Line" or "rises/falls".
To figure out the colors, open the report in Excel and then it has a key. I don't know, may need a feature request to add a legend to the chart view.

Re: Consistent profitability question

I just started playing with the Over-Optimization tool today. Would it be fair to say that I am looking for extremes here?  If all the lines plotted are pretty much hugging together, not TOO MUCH variance, then that should be fine?

Otherwise, what is the best way to look at this report?  I think I would only be interested in certain sections of the report, like the drawdown graph.