LONG only and SHORT only strategies better than both on 1 strategy?

Hi all,

I’ve seen a case where a vendor was selling long/short as a seperate strategy in the portfolio.

I’ve spent some time generating longs seperate from shorts and in general I’ve seen some great results.

Do you think this goes against being ROBUST as a strategy with both longs and shorts on the same strategy is by default more robust?

Please share if you’ve treid this approach or have an opinion.

I believe being only long or short would increase the chance of a strategy to be data biased. Such statement may be false in scope of equity markets (stocks etc.) since their main goal always being more valuable, in other words being long only. On the other hand, money market (FX) may experience long and short trends for a signficant period of time. Let’s say this year appreciation of EUR may in favor of both US and Europe resultimg long trend in EURUSD and the opposite scenario is also possible for the following year. Therefore, the rules of a strategy should be eligible to handle both type of trends within money markets. Despite my approach is a bit theoritical, I’ve also experienced this empirically (long only and short only strategies tend to be more data biased).

With SQ3 i made alot  of long and short only for avail.. They brought more diversification. But their failure rate is higher. Much because what EOwithrand wrote about trends and not because they should be more curve fitted like is a commonly expressed reason for not to make them which is Bull..

Thanks for the comments. I tend to agree with the above comments.

Going only long or short on the selected symbol can be sometimes a good idea if you consider ‘swap’ as cost of trading 🙂