Quote from bwolinsky:
This all depends.
I agree, Mike, anyone with Gann in the name has no clue what he's talking about.
If your close to your original hypothesis, tweaking for an extra 10% APR or more is fine.
If you go from -50% NP to plus 1000%, there's a little too much fitting. If you're going from 70% APR to an extra 5% to 75-80% APR, there's nothing wrong with that.
It will depend on how much of a boost this is to your original results.
On your "if-touched" problem, only consider your order filled if the trade limit order "trades through" the price, or do what Mike suggested and add a tick of slippage plus commission to both sides.
You've pointed out the key to proper development - validation of the hypothesis.
If one does not know what their hypothesis is, or, they are searching for one via data mining, they are likely performing a destructive form of cruve fitting rather than actual constructive optimization.
Let me be very clear about this, curve fitting/optimization can be very useful if done properly. Also, changing one's sample space for OOS testing is paramount post optmization, i.e. walk-forward testing.
Truth be told I curve fit *everything* and every system I've gone live with has performed nearly identical to the model. The driving factor behind a system's success is the fundamental concept, not the fit params, unless of course those params void the hypothesis in some way.
