Simplicity is key

[ironchef]

The trigger is always the same, a price action pattern. Every market, every timeframe, same pattern. Coding an algorithm to recognize that pattern wasn't hard.

The most time-consuming part was getting some sort of market context. I tried many things and came up with something satisfying. But 2 days ago something happened that blew my mind. I was tired and "played" with my strategies. Altering some parts and see what happens. Just for fun and out of boredom. And then it happened: I changed the context-recognition-algorithm to a one-liner. It gave better results all along! A one-liner! Unbelievable...

Actually after I reread your post more carefully, I think these are very important observations. Good food for thought. Thanks for sharing.

I am happy for you.

Regards,

 

[birzos]

I am a trader since 2007. Last year I got tired of staring on the screen the whole day. So I moved to automation. First partly, then full automated.

The trigger is always the same, a price action pattern. Every market, every timeframe, same pattern. Coding an algorithm to recognize that pattern wasn't hard.

The most time-consuming part was getting some sort of market context. I tried many things and came up with something satisfying. But 2 days ago something happened that blew my mind. I was tired and "played" with my strategies. Altering some parts and see what happens. Just for fun and out of boredom. And then it happened: I changed the context-recognition-algorithm to a one-liner. It gave better results all along! A one-liner! Unbelievable...

Actually what you did was remove all the synthetic nonsense and revert to a 'natural' algorithm. Most of the time the problem with that is it requires contextual analysis which humans are 240,000 times better at than computers which skews to discretionary.

Congratulations on making it work, however we have been in QE for almost a decade so be careful that a new context is not around the corner. A simple algorithm allows you to adapt up to 100x faster than synthetic based algorithms which is what the majority use. Good job.