System that works but lack the capital, please advise

A MAN comes to me with a DEAL (selling, leasing, renting, partnership, co-venture etc) on VENTURE X.

I first look at the MAN not the DEAL, not the VENTURE. I’ve done this many times in the past, mostly on commercial real estate investments.

If I was interested, I would then want to de-cloak the OP and check-out all the details of his life. Work, education, credit reports, criminal background etc. After he made a voluntary disclosure, and if I was still interested, I would have to spend money on due diligence to get a good picture of the MAN compared to his version of himself.

There is a spectrum and type for all the people seeking capital. For example, at one end a young James Simons comes to me with a black box trading idea. He has credentials that simply are rock solid and impressive (him not his idea). That Nigerian Prince that keeps e-mailing everyone, not so much, he’s at the other end. At this time, this pitch is from an anonymous person on the internet, registered his account yesterday, says he is in the Netherlands but worries about U.S. regulation. That slides things more towards the side of the Nigerian Prince.

$25 to 50k is not much. Got a car, sell it. Go a to a bank get a loan. Get a cash advance on a credit card if the returns are that good. Why haven’t family and friends been approached? Who have you already approached and why have they turned you down?

Look at the MAN not the DEAL.

If I got involved with this (and I am not getting involved) and the blackbox was real, I would want to push $10 million through it. What happens to your blackbox when some serious money gets juiced through it? BTW, OP you would not get a piece of my $10MM. Best you get is a deal on the $50k that you seek, but I get terms to run your device as much as I want on my own.

@sle has the questions on the box, and they are not getting answered.

Already spent too much time on this, no soup for you, NEXT.

Some 10 years ago i`d`ve gotten the piece of your $10MM in no time.
 
As others have asked - if you are actually confident about the system, ask money from friends or family. But since you won't, it makes me think you're not really confident about the performance. $25k in Netherlands isn't a lot of money at all. I understand if you were living in Northern Siberia in a small village then yes, $25k might be out of reach.
 
That`s nonsense.You can trade your system with as little as 500 bucks.Trade it live for some time,live results that what`s needed.

Obviously he's day trading stocks, well swing but needs the option to close same day occasionally, hence 25k+.

Stocks trend better than indexs imho, i did very well till 25k rule came in 15years back, still pissed about this rule, been unable to raise 25k+ so can relate to his issue.

Need made it with options but blew up badly, forex from $300 huge waste of time for like 13years.

Ohh how the years fly by :(
 
@longshort your simulation results are from a bull period (2009~2017). Do you also have simulation results from a bear market? For example the period 2007 ~ 2009?

My first thought as well. His backtesting begins at the very point the market turned.

How convenient.
 
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As others have asked - if you are actually confident about the system, ask money from friends or family. But since you won't, it makes me think you're not really confident about the performance. $25k in Netherlands isn't a lot of money at all. I understand if you were living in Northern Siberia in a small village then yes, $25k might be out of reach.

Ha ha. Lol. Netherlands indeed. Ok, longshort, come by and run this baby through me and see what we can do about it. However:

1) Is the system a purely intraday play? It surely looks that way.

2) If so, the pnl curve looks way too smooth for only 20ish intraday stock trades. "Look-ahead bias" jumps straight at me in this one. Check your entry/exit price assumptions to start with.

3) 14 cents per trade on average for an intraday system in the US stock market these days with the VIX permanently in the low 10s looks like a pipe dream to me, however. You must have found a very dark and overlooked corner in this market!

Enjoy!
 
Ok, let's take it a different way. What are your execution assumptions, including

(a) delay from the signal to fill if you are testing on barred data

(b) if you are testing on tick data, do you assume a fractional fill

(b.1) if you are testing on tick data, what fraction of traded size do you assume

(c) are you trading the same size every time or you're using the strength of the signal for sizing?
No delays modeled and no tick data used. It's low frequency (not scalping) on multi-minute bars. Yes, the same $50K lot size every time, although both sub-systems can have an overlapping trade, which would somewhat correspond to strength of the signal.

What percent of the time do you have a position in the market? That, combined with return on trade value, would tell you a lot of interesting things.

(a) what is the fraction of buys out of all trades?

(b) if (a) is close to 0 or to 1, take your average trade return and subtract an average change of your instrument - what is the Sharpe and Sortino ratios of the strategy after that? This, btw, is the best test for risk premium strategies.
First, I assumed 09:30 to 16:00 New York time represents 100% of the market, since this is the only time when positions are permitted. Using that standard, the more active sub-system is 33.7% in the market. The less active sub-system is 19.8% in the market.

You then bring up a good point. I agree, it's useful to test how much performance is due to market going your way. So I simulated a buy-and-hold system that is always long but only in the permitted time from above. Using no slippage/commission, in several years of the data the buy-and-hold system is significantly positive. In other years, also several, buy-and-hold is significantly negative.

So on the one hand, there are alternating bull and bear markets in the underlying data. On the other hand, both of my sub-systems only have positive returns in all years of the data, after slippage/commission.

My personal rule of thumb is that you divide the Sharpe from the back test by square root of the number of free variables (including the base hypothesis).4 is a lot and 7 is really a lot, IMHO.
Interesting method, never heard of it done this way. I like to look at edge strength and number of trades. Profit factor >2.5 and 300-500 trades can be significant. Profit factor 1.4 and I'd like to see 2000+ trades. The system complexity here is low in my opinion and the parameters don't really do a lot. Easy to read the code and understand the logic.
 
@longshort your simulation results are from a bull period (2009~2017). Do you also have simulation results from a bear market? For example the period 2007 ~ 2009?
Please see my above answer, there are bull and bear markets in the backtest period. The backtest uses all data since instrument inception.
Can't you modify your system such that it places only three/four trades per week? Your current system is set to only trade approximately 5 times per week so you would only need to slow it down a little.
Not ideal but looks feasible. Thanks for the idea.
 
Drawdown , summer month(s) 2015 and 2016 (short vol. bias?) along with "since inception very early 2009" appears to be the VXX etf ?
VXX inception 1/30/2009.
 
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I strongly suspect that a private collaboration may be your only realistic prospect, given your figures.

I think the 20% drawdown precludes any professional managers/investors/traders of OPM from being interested (and I know that would be my own employers' attitude).
It's easy to substitute $50K initial capital with $200K, which reduces all percentages in the report that are based on initial capital, to one quarter. Instead of 20% drawdown, you now have 5% drawdown. Easy to reduce leverage because report is without compounding. The returns in % decrease correspondingly to one quarter. Year-to-date return 2017 is now 11.83% instead of previously 47.32%.
 
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