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You seem to have hit a nerve with your post. I generally agree with the
responses so far and will try to address topics not covered by the other
responses.
When I first saw the post I deleted it, basically putting it in the
category of so many that ask, in effect, "Where can I buy a machine to
print legal $100 bills. I am willing to pay a few thousand dollars for such
a machine."
But your follow-up message indicates that you are disappointed that no one
could solve your problem so many people decided to post serious replies.
One problem not mentioned by the others is related to the many unspecified
characteristics of a trading system. One particular part of your
"specification" was particularly curious:
> Which systems do you think are worthwhile to purchase and, more
> importantly, to follow blindly for about three years?
Below is a list of questions I usually ask someone who asks me this kind of
question:
> Effort Required - Do you want to sit in front of the computer
full time and make trades, do you want to give the system to
your broker to takes all signals blindly, or is this a side
activity such that you need to look at data after work or on
weekends?
> Holding Period - Do you want to hold a trade for minutes,
hours, days, or months?
> Markets - What markets do you want to trade and how many at
a time?
> Capital - How much capital do you have to put into a trading
account and is it your kid's tuition next year or can you
really afford to lose it?
> Psychological Factors - Do you need a high percentage of
small profits, or would you sit through a high percentage
of losses waiting for the big win?
> Black or White Box - Would you be happy with a closed system
(Black Box) or do you want to know what is inside it (White Box)
so that you might modify it when (not if) it stops working.
If you want to modify it, do you understand how to write program?
> Data - What kind of data to you use, end-of-day, intraday
delayed, or intraday real-time? How reliable is it? If there
is a bad tick that causes a bad trade signal, will you recognize
it or will you take the faulty signal?
> Special Cases - Trading systems can only handle "expected
situations" that they were programmed to handle. Does it need
to be "idiot-proof" and get you out of any adverse situation
or will you recognize that something isn't working right and
stop trading until "normalcy" returns.
> Support - How much hand-holding will you need while trading
the system? What is your risk tolerance?
As you can see there are a lot of factors so that a system that is good for
one person will most likely not be good for many others.
>
>I received many messages saying that such a system does not
>exist.
>
I can assure you that great systems exist and are traded by many on this
list but they are not for sale for lots of good reasons.
> They are worth much more than anyone will pay for them. If they
can really make money they are almost priceless.
> If many people use the same system, it will stop working. Systems
usually depend upon some repeatable characteristic of a market.
If everybody knows about the characteristic, it gets "arbitraged
away".
> If you let a system out of your private control, it will eventually
"leak out" to the world and be used (or sold) by others.
> The legal problems of selling systems are such that even if your
system works, you can expect to spend lots of time defending
yourself from the bureaucracy.
There are also "decent" systems for sale. They can have a positive expected
return but they often have extended periods of drawdowns or are not
"robust", meaning they may stop working at any time or require reoptimizing
to be tuned to the market frequently.
But I would agree with your quote from Ralph Vince that "systems, like
market ideas, are 99.73% junk".
The audience is cynical because most of us have bought a lot of this junk,
spending thousands of dollars and causing us to loose thousands more in
bad trades.
Bob Fulks
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