As I consider what new tools and content to create for Slope, I keep running against the same reality: is this market even worth analyzing? In other words, for the past thirteen years, the market has been completely fabricated and warped by the direct and persistent interference of the U.S. government. It isn’t a real market. So should even of us bother?
Let me offer a simple example: let’s say I announced the release of the greatest trading system of all time. It generated a “buy” signal when the 5 day average crossed above the 30 day, and a “sell” signal when the opposite took place. I had back-tested it against a dozen years of data, and it was profitable every year and beat the market handily. Pretty sweet, right? (I haven’t actually tested this, but I strongly suspect this “system”, which could have been conjured up by a 5 year old boy, would have had fabulous results since 2008.
Would that be a system to carry into the future? Well, yeah, if the market keeps going up forever. Absolutely. But this hare-brained system hasn’t been through the rigors of a real market which has big ups, big downs, and unpredictable cycles.
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