Trend Reflection system
- Thread starter sunnyskies
- Start date
I bought Trend Reflection some years back, had both of the two portfolios traded by one of their 'authorised' brokers, ie. according to their advertised formulas. Guess what ? After 3 years, it had made zilch, zero, de nada (up, down & around).
More fool me. Don't make the same mistake. Learn how to trade yourself.
More fool me. Don't make the same mistake. Learn how to trade yourself.
one of jack schwagers market wizards, the former partner of richard dennis:
William Eckhardt, PhD, centi-millionaire and extremely successful fund manager, in "The New Market Wizards", by Jack Schwager, pp. 120 following:
Do you have any familiarity with the systems that are sold to the public?
Eckhardt: I used to try and keep abreast of them, but, given the preponderance of garbage out there, I found it an exasperating experience. You have to sift through so much that's both complicated and worthless that I think time is better spent brainstorming.
Why do you categorize these systems as worthless?
Eckhardt: Because they tend to overfit the past data.
Do you think the overfitting is a consequence of naiveté? Or an unbridled desire to sell more systems?
Eckhardt: At this late date, it's probably predominantly disingenuous.
Have you looked at a lot of outside systems?
Eckhardt: I've looked at about 50.
Out of those 50, how many had value?
Eckhardt: One. And I don't think it had value as a system, but it had an element I ws able to use later.
Do you then feel that purchasing systems is a waste of time?
Eckhardt: For the most part, I feel that's true. I would hate to think how much money a person would have to spend to chance on something good. If you have the resources to evaluate systems, your time is better spent developing your own ideas. I wouldn't recommend buying systems.
Is the idea that if a system really worked - by that I mean a combination of good profitability, low volatility, and durability - it wouldn't make monetary sense for someone to sell it?
Eckhardt: Occasionally, it might happen that somebody comes up with something really good and sells it because he needs the money. but in my experience something good isn't discovered on a Greyhound bus while leafing through charts; it's something developed over a period of years. Typically, if a person has invested sufficient time and money into developing a system, he or she will want to use the system, not sell it.
and, finally:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7482
another guy who'd been handled as some kind of a wizard for ages in the futures industry and who'd claimed he was honestly tracking performance of his and other peoples systems until he got busted for fraud by the CFTC who finally woke up and decided to cross check his claims of being a very successful trader against his brokerage accounts.
a bit more re vendor systems allegedly tested by Futures Truth:
1.Rating groups should not rate their own products. That's exactly what Futures Truth does by endorsing systems by Lundy Hill.
2. Curve fitting is violated regularly.
http://www.turtletrader.com/truth.html
plus, from one of the very old snake oil busters, bruce babcock:
1. You must know the maximum historical equity drawdown before funding an account to trade any system - The most important of all system figures was omitted by Futures Truth!
2. With a black box system any line of code could be entered, like "do not trade S&Pâs on October 19, the day of a systemâs largest possible loss." The system purchaser, just like Futures Truth, would never know the difference!
3. We strongly recommend all CTCN readers ignore the Futures Truth rankings. Also, as Kent so well points out, most of the Futures Truth top-10 systems have huge drawdowns and flat time periods between new equity highs.
4. In addition, we have been told by the owner of Futures Truth their rankings really are subjective.
5. Important Editor's Note: Your editor will also include on our Internet Site (www.webtrading.com) (former site of Bruce Babcock CTCN) his own shocking and amazing past first-hand experiences with Futures Truth. No punches will be pulled or facts hidden. We will tell you everything about our past dealings with Futures Truth.
This will include all the details on how they published heavily curve-fitted and optimized output from one of our trading systems. This was done every month for a very long time by their asking us to send them a new trading system disk each month with freshly optimized parameters and our own price data (which also could have been easily curve-fitted - but the data wasn't).
How they then listed it in their Master Performance Tables and ranked it highly, all based on those heavily curve-fitted parameters that were curve-fitted on a regular basis.
Of course, the un-optimized and non-curve fitted actual trading results would have been vastly different and likely inferior to performance results they told the public about. CTCN members should all be aware by now that performance of an optimized or curve-fitted system will in all likelihood fall apart or deteriorate when you start trading it.
http://www.webtrading.com/issue39.htm
cheers
William Eckhardt, PhD, centi-millionaire and extremely successful fund manager, in "The New Market Wizards", by Jack Schwager, pp. 120 following:
Do you have any familiarity with the systems that are sold to the public?
Eckhardt: I used to try and keep abreast of them, but, given the preponderance of garbage out there, I found it an exasperating experience. You have to sift through so much that's both complicated and worthless that I think time is better spent brainstorming.
Why do you categorize these systems as worthless?
Eckhardt: Because they tend to overfit the past data.
Do you think the overfitting is a consequence of naiveté? Or an unbridled desire to sell more systems?
Eckhardt: At this late date, it's probably predominantly disingenuous.
Have you looked at a lot of outside systems?
Eckhardt: I've looked at about 50.
Out of those 50, how many had value?
Eckhardt: One. And I don't think it had value as a system, but it had an element I ws able to use later.
Do you then feel that purchasing systems is a waste of time?
Eckhardt: For the most part, I feel that's true. I would hate to think how much money a person would have to spend to chance on something good. If you have the resources to evaluate systems, your time is better spent developing your own ideas. I wouldn't recommend buying systems.
Is the idea that if a system really worked - by that I mean a combination of good profitability, low volatility, and durability - it wouldn't make monetary sense for someone to sell it?
Eckhardt: Occasionally, it might happen that somebody comes up with something really good and sells it because he needs the money. but in my experience something good isn't discovered on a Greyhound bus while leafing through charts; it's something developed over a period of years. Typically, if a person has invested sufficient time and money into developing a system, he or she will want to use the system, not sell it.
and, finally:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7482
another guy who'd been handled as some kind of a wizard for ages in the futures industry and who'd claimed he was honestly tracking performance of his and other peoples systems until he got busted for fraud by the CFTC who finally woke up and decided to cross check his claims of being a very successful trader against his brokerage accounts.
a bit more re vendor systems allegedly tested by Futures Truth:
1.Rating groups should not rate their own products. That's exactly what Futures Truth does by endorsing systems by Lundy Hill.
2. Curve fitting is violated regularly.
http://www.turtletrader.com/truth.html
plus, from one of the very old snake oil busters, bruce babcock:
1. You must know the maximum historical equity drawdown before funding an account to trade any system - The most important of all system figures was omitted by Futures Truth!
2. With a black box system any line of code could be entered, like "do not trade S&Pâs on October 19, the day of a systemâs largest possible loss." The system purchaser, just like Futures Truth, would never know the difference!
3. We strongly recommend all CTCN readers ignore the Futures Truth rankings. Also, as Kent so well points out, most of the Futures Truth top-10 systems have huge drawdowns and flat time periods between new equity highs.
4. In addition, we have been told by the owner of Futures Truth their rankings really are subjective.
5. Important Editor's Note: Your editor will also include on our Internet Site (www.webtrading.com) (former site of Bruce Babcock CTCN) his own shocking and amazing past first-hand experiences with Futures Truth. No punches will be pulled or facts hidden. We will tell you everything about our past dealings with Futures Truth.
This will include all the details on how they published heavily curve-fitted and optimized output from one of our trading systems. This was done every month for a very long time by their asking us to send them a new trading system disk each month with freshly optimized parameters and our own price data (which also could have been easily curve-fitted - but the data wasn't).
How they then listed it in their Master Performance Tables and ranked it highly, all based on those heavily curve-fitted parameters that were curve-fitted on a regular basis.
Of course, the un-optimized and non-curve fitted actual trading results would have been vastly different and likely inferior to performance results they told the public about. CTCN members should all be aware by now that performance of an optimized or curve-fitted system will in all likelihood fall apart or deteriorate when you start trading it.
http://www.webtrading.com/issue39.htm
cheers
Well, I was never considering buying it. But great job indeed guys! A few days turn-around and you got this guy looking like the BS artist he is. Gotta love ET! It just kinda stood from the rest of BS in that it they claim they *trade* it and can *prove* it. Once again, great job!
You might want to consider Mini-max from Breakout Futures
http://www.breakoutfutures.com
No affiliation ... but it looks fair:
--> less than $400 for a fully disclosed trading system (actually 2).
--> one year money back guarantee
--> discloses track record with reasonable comm/fees deducted
A colleague has been watching this system for a while, and the results posted on the website concur with his findings.
There seem to be honest vendors out there, just have to search for them
http://www.breakoutfutures.com
No affiliation ... but it looks fair:
--> less than $400 for a fully disclosed trading system (actually 2).
--> one year money back guarantee
--> discloses track record with reasonable comm/fees deducted
A colleague has been watching this system for a while, and the results posted on the website concur with his findings.
There seem to be honest vendors out there, just have to search for them