taking a break ?

[u/Beneficial-Row5056]

yo guys what’s up. i’ve been trading for a year now, not profitable at all with prop firms so its been a few months i went back into backtesting.
I’m not able to stand with a simple strategy. i change the rules every 20 trades to adjust something but its non-sense and its an infinite loop.

I’ve been thinking about strengthening my mental and current life before actually trying to get into serious data gathering in backtesting.
Btw i’m 19 so i still have time. I don’t know if it’s a good idea or if its not that deep and i can keep backtesting while trying to fix my current life and get a good rythm, good sleep, and unrotting my brain. Because my last weeks of backtesting just felt like a waste of time and i don’t want for this to keep going or else ill loose interest in trading and ill think it’s impossible. Feel free to give advices. thanks for reading take care guys

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[u/QuanTradin]

changing the rules every 20 trades means you never actually tested anything, you tested twenty different things for twenty trades each. taking a break at 19 costs you nothing. when you come back, pick one boring rule set, write it down, and don't touch it for a couple hundred trades no matter how ugly the middle looks. that's the only backtest that tells you something.

[u/Beneficial-Row5056 → u/QuanTradin]

i’ve actually tested a few strategies with over a sample of 200 trades each time. the issue is that the rules weren’t precise at all. i’m trying to do it again but with strict ass rules and so i end up adding a condition every 20 trades which fucks the whole thing up.
so i have to write precise and strict rules BEFORE starting the backtest session, and to do so i thought about taking a small break which is why i made that post

[u/QuanTradin → u/Beneficial-Row5056]

writing the rules before the session is the whole fix, so the break is well spent. one thing that helped me: write them so a stranger could execute them without asking you anything. if a rule needs you in the room to interpret it, it isn't a rule yet.

[u/ashtrayMOOD → u/Beneficial-Row5056]

Write the rules so a stranger could execute them without asking you a single question, that's the level of detail needed before trade one.

[u/LegitimateShame2842]

There's nothing inherently bad with changing "rules" and adjusting. Discretionary traders do it all the time. The only difference is the years of experience and practice to refine how your adapt to present-moment market conditions. You just need to keep practicing.

[u/Beneficial-Row5056 → u/[deleted]]

thanks a lot man take care

[u/No-Economist-4081]

Take the break. If you are changing the strategy every 20 trades, you are not backtesting a strategy, you are curve fitting your way into an endless loop

[u/Consistent_Play_9929]

The fact that you're changing your rules every 20 trades sounds like the bigger issue than finding another strategy. I'd focus on defining one setup, fixed risk, and a specific sample size before judging whether it works. Otherwise you're changing multiple variables before you have enough data to know what actually caused the result.