{"id":12630,"date":"2010-09-04T16:46:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T20:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/?p=12630"},"modified":"2010-09-04T16:46:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-04T20:46:17","slug":"forex-backtest-evaluation-a-systematic-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2010\/09\/04\/forex-backtest-evaluation-a-systematic-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"Forex BackTest Evaluation &#8211; A Systematic Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Warren Seah<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. Modeling Quality<\/p>\n<p>Any back-test that is generated on an 1hr chart will be required to have  at least 90% quality. Lesser than 90% will produce unreliable results.  Another indicator that shows evidence of unreliable results is mismatch  chart errors. (Re-calculate your chart history from your feed provider  to solve the problem)<\/p>\n<p>2. Back-tested on Which Broker Data Feed<\/p>\n<p>If you are looking at a sales letter, you want to know where did the  provider generate his strategy back-test from. It will be ideal if it is  generated on a live server rather than a demo server. The differences  will be discuss in another articles so just keep in mind.<\/p>\n<p>3. Header<\/p>\n<p>This will include the symbol and period the strategy traded on.<\/p>\n<p>4. Parameters<\/p>\n<p>This section will indicate the options the strategy allow you to  personalise for your own trading needs. You can also find clues to how  the strategy trade just by looking at the parameters here. System  providers do not usually show this data to the public.<\/p>\n<p>5. Return on Investment (ROI)<\/p>\n<p>Calculate ROI by using net profit divided by initial deposit and  multiply by 100%. ROI is a positive figure indicates a profitable  strategy.<\/p>\n<p>6. Initial Deposit<\/p>\n<p>Some strategies need at least $10 000 trading capital. You want to see  if the system provider uses an initial deposit somewhere close to the  capital you have in your trading account.<\/p>\n<p>7. Maximum Drawdown<\/p>\n<p>Draw-downs are retracements in equity from previous equity highs in  short, losing periods. Maximum draw-down is calculated by finding the  highest peak in the equity curve and subtracting the subsequent lowest  trough before the next higher peak in the equity curve.<\/p>\n<p>When equity was reduced from a maximum of $10 000 to a minimum of $5  000, the maximum draw-down is $5 000 (50%).This particular ratio is what  we believe to be the most important of all ratios because it tell  investors in advance how much draw-down to tolerate before the system  hit the bucket.<\/p>\n<p>Can you tolerate the kind of draw-down listed for the strategy? Or does  the robot provides money management which allows you to lower their risk  and draw-down?<\/p>\n<p>8. Profit Factor<\/p>\n<p>Ratio of gross winnings divided by gross losses. PF greater than 1 indicates system is profitable.<\/p>\n<p>9. Percentage of Profitable Trades<\/p>\n<p>Self explanatory. Disadvantage of this ratio is that it does not tell us the magnitude of the profitable trades.<\/p>\n<p>10. Average Profit\/Average Loss<\/p>\n<p>Ratio of average profit per trade divided by average loss per trade.  Ratio greater than 1 and the higher the ratio indicates that the average  profit is greater than average loss. This is an ideal risk to reward  ratio that we will be looking for in a trending system. It will differ  in a scalping system.<\/p>\n<p>11. Equity Graph<\/p>\n<p>It shows the running equity throughout the traded period in a graphical manner.<\/p>\n<p>12. Trades History<\/p>\n<p>Entry Type<\/p>\n<p>Under the Type, it will show whether the system trades with market order  (instant order) or stop or limit stop order ( Trade place in advanced).<\/p>\n<p>Average trade duration<\/p>\n<p>The time column will show clues of the duration per trade.<\/p>\n<p>Take Profit and Stop Loss<\/p>\n<p>Can be calculated by the difference between SL and Price and TP and Price.<\/p>\n<p>Maximum loss in equity per trade<\/p>\n<p>Scan through all the trades and look for an order that hit stop loss.  Use the figures in Profit\/(Loss) column divide by the previous equity  balance and multiply by 100%. This will give you an idea of how much  risk per trade the system uses. (Does not always apply depend on the  characteristics of a system)<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>By Warren Seah<\/p>\n<p>Warren examines commercial trading systems and has researched and  analyzed systems to uncover systems which bring in consistent profits.<\/p>\n<p>Click Here For More Guides On FxEAreview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fxeareview.com\/review-criteria\/introduction\">EA Reviews Criteria<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fxeareview.com\/\">http:\/\/www.FxEAReview.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Warren Seah 1. Modeling Quality Any back-test that is generated on an 1hr chart will be required to have at least 90% quality. Lesser than 90% will produce unreliable results. Another indicator that shows evidence of unreliable results is mismatch chart errors. (Re-calculate your chart history from your feed provider to solve the problem) &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2010\/09\/04\/forex-backtest-evaluation-a-systematic-approach\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Forex BackTest Evaluation &#8211; A Systematic Approach&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}