After Walk-Forward Matrix

Hi Mark,

 

I’m following your article about Strategy Building Process, but not sure what to do next after the Walk-forward Matrix.

 

If the strategy Passed with a nice 3×3 matrix do I optimize it following the suggested history days of the walk-forward matrix? or do I optimize it using the whole data which I used during the test before going live? … then how long you think is a “good” period to test it live on Demo account for H1 strategy to confirm the performance before moving to real account?

 

Thanks

I had the same question once. Mark told me the follwing:

 

1. Note down the optimization period and days in history.

2. Safe the original strategy

3. Load the original strategy using “Simple Optimization” and adjust the time period in the data tab under Settings (number of history days backwards).

4. Optimize and take the best result (save the mq4 file).

 

Hope I could help

yes, generally you can optimize your strategy using the suggested history days – this is what worked in WF matrix, so you should replicate it also in real trading.

WF matrix gives you the information that you should reoptimize your strategy for example every 100 days on history of 200 days, so you should do it like this.

 

Or, if you’ll check the parameter values and they are all more or less the same in every run you can use the strategy without any reoptimiztion.

 

Testing on demo depends on the strategy and how many trades it makes per month. I’d like to see at least 20 trades to draw some conclusions about strategy profitability.

 

When I put some of my strategies to demo, they were in loss for the first 3 months, at one point it was 40% down. Then the rally started and they are currently over 500% in profit.

So there is no general rule. The strategy shouldn’t be losing much. If it is stagnating or if it has small drawdown 10-20% it is normal, it can still be a profitable strategy in the long run.

 

Mark