Quote Originally Posted by TraderD View Post
Billy,
The rather simple-minded observation I have (admittedly, in complete hindsight) is that if the robot didn't include the ETF confirmation criterion (in its specific incarnation), we would be now in a rather impressive short swing trade and AFAICT a manual override into cash wouldn't happen, is that correct? If that is indeed the case, wouldn't you be inclined to think that the ETF confirmation is an over-optimized component of the robot? Would it make sense to go back and reduce the number of parameters tweaked in the robot setup to achieve greater consistency at the likely expense of lower overall return?

Trader D
It is true that not including the confirmation would have made a killing in the recent series of trade, but would have significantly deteriorated the robot performance in previous series of trades. It is only in hindsight that Pascal could make the discovery that confirmation improved performance during POMO periods but hindered it out of POMO periods. This information is obviously now seriously considered for inclusion in the robot rules and very likely will be in the future.

A manual override in cash would have happened anyway for new entries and the robot would already have covered its initial short position.

Now, let me kindly notice that if we change the rules after each losing trade, the robot will lose its objectivity and utility. Pascal is running new mixes of rules in backtests 24/24 with the latest observations mixes since a few days now to make sure of optimal necessary rules adaptations.

Billy