Quote from niko:
Thanks.
My relatively short experience with pattern backtesting, and the disappointment with the ensuing forward testing of these patterns, was beneficial in that it reinforced the limitations of a mechanical approach. I am re-posting the following in reference to your earlier inquiry about the hinge pattern. I am sure you are already familiar with this thinking, but repetition helps me for sure.
Quote from dbphoenix:
While I'm not optimistic about your efforts to "come up with Reversal situations containing compelling opportunities that occur with more frequency than the basic re-test scenario", I don't want to discourage you from trying. If you're determined and you don't give up easily, you may just come out the other side. Otherwise, you may become defeated for no particularly good reason other than the choice to wander down the wrong path.
I suggest that using the so-called "123" and "2B" as the bases for your plan is an error since they are little more than features of the landscape and have no particular meaning in and of themselves. Unless reversals take place against reasonably important support and resistance, they are far more likely than not to draw the trader into an almost continual state of trading counter-trend. Wyckoff figured this out more than a century ago. Dunnigan, Ross, Sperandeo and others merely re-affirmed it, though they seem never to have figured out that their problem had to do with ignoring support and resistance.
There are other ways to find reversal opportunities. One is to change your bar interval so that you're looking at different levels of support and resistance. Making it smaller will of course mean that the swings you're trading will be smaller. This may suit you. Making it larger will mean that the swing will also be larger. But the waiting may make you impatient. Another is to learn how to trade ranges since they occur more often than trends do. However, trading ranges means having to give up the safety net of the retest since you have to take the trade as soon as the limit of the range is reached (ranges are rarely accommodating enough to provide retests). If you don't want to do that, then you may have to begin monitoring a variety of instruments and trade those that are on the springboard to providing a trading opportunity during the coming trading session.