r/propfirm

i run a handful of systems on one account and for a long time i tracked return as a percent of current balance. compounding makes the late months look huge and you start sizing up because the curve feels steep

switched to an index. 100 on the start date, then 100 plus cumulative profit divided by the starting account size. a good month in month 11 counts the same as one in month 2

chart is made up monthly returns, same numbers both lines, only the scorekeeping differs. the gap at the end is compounding, not skill

other thing i do now, when i change weights or add a system i recalculate the whole history with the new weights. otherwise the curve is half one portfolio and half another. old screenshots stop matching and thats fine

do you recalc the past or only apply new weights forward

Something worth checking on any multi year stock test, and I got this wrong in plenty of my own early ones.

You pick a universe, usually the current S&P 500 or the current Nasdaq 100, and you run a rule across ten years of history on those names. The list you used is todays list. Every company that dropped out of the index over those ten years, whether it got bought, went under, or just shrank out of it, is not in the test at all, because it was never in the list you started from.

What you are left with is ten years of history belonging to companies that were healthy enough to still be in the index this morning. The index swaps names out every year and over a decade that is a long list of companies that a current member list simply does not contain.

This hits mean reversion rules hardest. A rule that buys a drawdown and waits gets tested only on the drawdowns that recovered, because the names where the drawdown kept going are precisely the ones that left the index. The test never sees them, so the recovery rate it reports is not the recovery rate you would have lived through.

Its a bit like judging a high school program by asking the seniors how it went. The kids who quit in tenth grade arent in the room to ask.

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Two things that actually help.

The first is a universe dated to the day the rule fired, so a name enters the test when it entered the index and leaves when it left. Point in time membership data is sold rather than given away, which is why so few retail tests have it.

The second is cheaper. Run the same rule on a fixed basket you chose for a reason that has nothing to do with current membership, a handful of names you picked by sector at the start date, and compare. If the current member version is much stronger, the gap between them is a rough measure of how much of the result was survivorship.

Worth saying that the length of the history is not what fixes this. The equity candles I test on in Agenticks go back to 2000, and a test built on a current name list carries exactly the same bias at 26 years as it does at 10. The bias comes out of the list of names, and it can only be removed there.

I have found an edge with this code and I'm currently applying to my prop firm challenge account with EA (expert advisor) on MT5. 5000$ acc and rn its sitting on 5360$. I really preciate your feedbacks! Give me insights...

Search in github for : breakout-backtest-tool