How long does it take to judge whether a system is working?

Trading is often about how to take the appropriate risk without exposing yourself to very human flaws.
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FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

I appreciate that this is very much a "how long is a piece of string" type question but, as a relative newcomer, I'm genuinely curious to know what it took to make the more expert and longstanding forum members think, or realise, that they might be on to something.

I just play with pretty small stakes compared to most of you, and likely always will do, (in-play trading only) but over the last week I've either got ridiculously lucky or I've hit onto something with my latest strategy which I have stuck to strictly and religiously (except for 1 fat fingers moment where I got really lucky...). I've played 61 horse racing markets (UK & Irish) this week and won on 58 of them. Yesterday and today I won money on all 31 out of the 31 races that I played.
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I know that 31 or even 61 is not really any kind of representative sample but, frankly, this week has been in stark contrast to every other week and every other strategy I've tried since I began in November. Should I be hopeful yet? My natural tendency is always towards self doubt...
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PeterLe
Posts: 3715
Joined: Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:19 pm

I think the answer is...it depends
By way of example; if you average win is £1 but your average expected loss is likely to be £100, then the jury is still out
F however, your expected loss is likely to be also £1 then it’s looking good.
Hope it goes well for you ,
Regards
Peter
neld0r
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2016 10:45 pm

after say 500 trades and you're still up, your system is *probably* working
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

All depends on what sort of probability you're expecting your system to return like Peter says. I can trade 100 shots in running and get a decent win rate whereas I doubt I'd get the same win rate playing even money shots.
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Kafkaesque
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Are all those with £2 stakes or?
FrogThimble
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Kafkaesque wrote:
Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:27 pm
Are all those with £2 stakes or?
No, opening the trade with a stake that's 5% of my bank with a Servant placing the initial bet... and I manually trade out for a profit when my rules are met or a Safety servant trades out for a loss if my "get out" rules are met before my profit rules are.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

neld0r wrote:
Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:49 pm
after say 500 trades and you're still up, your system is *probably* working
OK, so that's probably about a month then - depending upon what races are available. Length of race is also a factor. I won't bet on anything that's less than 9 furlongs.
TipTopTrader
Posts: 462
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:29 pm

sounds like you're having really encouraging results.I would run it for a few months.Then if you're still making a profit use the profits as the bank.So in the end you will know after 6 months to a year if its a long term winning strategy and won't have risked any of your own bank to find out.I know when you first find a good thing, you think straight away about how much you could make with bigger stakes.But it could be a pot of gold or a bomb waiting to blown up in your face.especially if its a inplay strategy.I hope it works out for you what ever to decide to do.
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marksmeets302
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There's a fairly lengthy thread about this here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12099&hilit=bera&start=50#p132348
FrogThimble
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TipTopTrader wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:18 am
sounds like you're having really encouraging results.I would run it for a few months.Then if you're still making a profit use the profits as the bank.So in the end you will know after 6 months to a year if its a long term winning strategy and won't have risked any of your own bank to find out.I know when you first find a good thing, you think straight away about how much you could make with bigger stakes.But it could be a pot of gold or a bomb waiting to blown up in your face.especially if its a inplay strategy.I hope it works out for you what ever to decide to do.
Yes, my intention is to use the profits as my bank if this continues to work. I'm not really thinking about jumping to bigger stakes though... just a gradual progression using the same percentage of my bank each time until (and if) I reach about £500... after which I think I'll call that the ceiling and just bank anything above that level. If... a big if... I get there.

For what it's worth I had another good day. 24 races and 24 positive outcomes ranging from 17p to £3.87 (average £1.16 per race). So my strike rate is now 82 wins to 3 losses since I started this. Or a 96% strike rate with a 59% increase to my bank since I started the system.

However, keeping in mind the other terrible methods I've used in the past I'll need to make another £400 just to cancel out everything I lost between November and March so I'm under no illusions. It's a tough game.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
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Saturday was brutal... My system showed its flaws at around the 100 trades point when something I hadn't anticipated happened and the previous day's profits got wiped out. Back to the drawing board for me again. :D
xitian
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"Back to the drawing board" sounds a bit drastic. There could still be legs in your strategy if you can account for the "unanticipated" situation that caused the losses. If you can prevent those without minimising the amounts of all the previous wins then you could potentially still be quite positive overall.

If you plot a chart of cumulative total P&L for all the markets (or trades) what does it look like?

Re: the £400 of losses testing previous strategies - consider it the start up expense like any business. Commit as much as you are happy to a start up fund and use it sensibly. It needs to be money you can lose and not worry about, since there's likelihood any/most businesses don't get off the ground. But don't be afraid of using it. Just be sensible. Even better - learn the skills to collect data and backtest stuff without risking money. Admittedly this is a bit harder with in-play strategies.
FrogThimble
Posts: 124
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:26 pm

xitian wrote:
Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:17 pm
"Back to the drawing board" sounds a bit drastic. There could still be legs in your strategy if you can account for the "unanticipated" situation that caused the losses. If you can prevent those without minimising the amounts of all the previous wins then you could potentially still be quite positive overall.

If you plot a chart of cumulative total P&L for all the markets (or trades) what does it look like?
The chart is this:
graph.jpg
It would only have taken one more bad trade to wipe out all profit. I have a few ideas about ammending the method to try to reduce the risks - which is what I mean about the drawing board really. Major tinkering rather than a total rethink. I'll try that from tomorrow going back to minimal stakes.
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ShaunWhite
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It's obviously a high strike rate strategy and that usually goes hand in hand with larger losses. If you can stop the big ones then all well and good but you still have a positive trend.

What was the thing that happened that you didn't expect? Technical failure? Or a genuinely very unusual event?
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marksmeets302
Posts: 527
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:37 pm

Shaun is right, you have a strategy that has the occasional big loss, and they determine how well you do. After about 30 to 40 of these big losses you will have a good idea if your system is worth the effort. Right now there is no telling if they occur too frequently.

You might want to trade in some of the upside to lower the risk, As is this will be very hard to trade emotionally. You *will* encounter multiple back to back big losses en you're almost guaranteed to throw in the towel at that point. Another option is to trade this with low stakes in a portfolio of strategies.
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