when a strategy breaks the max drawdown

[Todd Hoff <gatrboots@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Everyone,

I could really use everyone's thoughts on this topic
which  always seems to happen to me.  Sorry if this
topic has already been discussed:

In your opinion, when  or by how much do you
realistically stop trading your strategy when it
breaks the max historical drawdown?

For example. Let's say, that I back-tested my strategy
for the last 5 years and the max historical drawdown
on this e mini sp system on a 1 contract basis was
$3,000. I was once told that we should give it some
leeway when ,in real time trading, it approaches the
max drawdown. Someone told me once to give it 20%. So 
in this example, we would stop trading the strategy
when it reached $3,600. Others have told me give it
50%.

I don't know if it is just murphey's law or just some
not so great systems, but every system that I have 
traded, always breaks the max drawdown substantially
and it usually falls apart after trading it real time.
It  seems that we just never know how much to allow
the system to exceed the max drawdown.

Sometimes I have stopped trading a system too early ,
when it barely broke the max dd and then recovered and
other times, I might have given it even too much
leeway when it broke the max dd, since it continued
drawing down even after stopping it.

Your input will be very welcome and helpful to me.

Thanks,

Todd Hoff