P & D,
Rewire your brainThat's my best hint lol.
We all had to do it! It's all about Neurology and wiring yourself into the market with fast, sound and reactive/rational mental mechanics. Seriously, you can't be emotional - logic is king.
About your current testing, in my experience instead of back-trading/back-testing, you're better off getting into some virtual Intraday trading first. Maybe try what i'm about to suggest by using multiple portfolios, not just the one.
After using backtesting for about 7yrs, i now think it is not a genuine indicator. It's more of a confirmatory tool, which i consider to be different. Backtesting, for me, is relatively useless for the majority of 'Tomorrows' commodities, stocks, indexes (or whatever). I can use them, but strictly at the end of an analysis and never at the beginning.
After having made a sound and thoroughly scrutinised decision with current data, backtesting decayed data only helps to confuse...things change for most tradable commodities week for week, f not day for day.
If you think about it, most of the data that spins off a play, a war, a geopolitical snag etc is obsolete within 1 - 2 mths...sometimes it's obsolete within a week, and may never happen again. So old data can confuse and usually offer false confidence/confirmation.
Try to be in front, or beside the market:
Step 1: Choose a few indicators and learn about them by applying them with and without Volume showing.
Practice watching their relationship to each other in on a bullish day, then bearish and so on for a month.
(As a side-thought, pay attention to which indicator dynamic/fluctuation influences which and try to eventually find some good, obvious dynamics to use for real - making a Pareto Chart for % effectiveness is the best)
Do the same thing day for a month with different combinations but always leave in at least one of the previous
indicators (choose the one that you clicked with most).
Step 2: Pay attention to Cash and Money Indicators, as well as the ratio of share parcels bought:sold if possible.
Eg., you REALLY want to know if a single major shareholding was just offloaded to 5000 small mum/dad investors.
If you really get into it, you can eventually learn the personality of indicators and what it is that certain combinations can reveal about a Calendar date, anniversaries (ie 911 tragedy has left footprints in the charts every year), Financials, Sentimentals, Global Fear, Anxiety, Knee-jerk responses VS Deep seeded reactions etc...Private/Corporate Cash Flow etc...
It is endless. But - it all begins with being beside the market (Intraday charts with useful/efficient Money-flow guides), or in front of it (futures). You rarely make a consistently good quid from Backtesting and it's also harder to find meanings.understanding about them enough to make it part of your neurology.
Cheers - i hope i didn't misunderstand or patronise the level you are at. All the best.
