It’s possible to see some really thorough backtesting of rules-based automatable strategies on Youtube. By thorough I mean scenarios run through backtesting software programmes involving 10+ years of price action, across 10+ forex pairs. There are a few worthwhile lessons to draw from these -
- a strategy based on rational price action-derived logic works
- but it doesn’t work on every pair all the time
- and you can’t tell from TA or FA which pairs it will perform well on right now
- on top of which nor can you tell when it will stop performing well on one pair and start performing well on another
- annoyingly - or maybe helpfully - periods of either performing well or performing badly can last for years, but these are periods, not permanence
- some strategies perform better on pairs with high historic price volatility, some perform better on pairs with low historic price volatility, but not all of them all the time, and volatility levels and performance are not a direct correlation anyway
All of which might explain why many good traders with good strategies have poor incomes.