I don't like to sharpe or st dev as a measurement of risk for various reasons.
Lets say you have two strategies. In one strategy you take small losses quickly but let your winners run. In the other strategy you let both losers and winners ride until your strategy gives you an exit signal.
The returns would look something like this, in returns by trade
strat 1, strat 2
(2.0) 5.0
(1.0) (3.0)
(1.0) 7.0
(2.0) (5.0)
19.5 3.0
(1.0) (4.0)
(2.0) 7.5
Both have a average return of 1.5%. However the first strategy has a higher standard deviation, at 7.95% vs 5.38%. Does this mean strategy one is the riskier strategy? I think most agree since you are capping your losses, that it is in fact the less risky strategy.
Also, there is an issue of what time period to us. If I calculate the daily returns of my core trading strategy and compound them, I would be at about 900% returns over a 2 year period so far. However, this grossly overestimates the true return potential of this strategy, since the capital that can be deployed is limited during any day. Some days, I don't see good trades and I only deploy 30k, while others I see a lot of good trades and I deploy 600k.
I may just post my daily returns and capital deployed in the future so if I do this, you can calculate anything that you want.