Trading System Health Check — free 2-minute diagnosis

1. When did you last verify a strategy on data it has never seen (true out-of-sample)?

Within the last quarter — it's part of my routineOnce, when I first built itNever, or I'm not sure what counts

2. How many parameters did you optimize to get your current equity curve?

0–3, and I know why each one exists4–7 — it needed some tuningMore than that (but the backtest looks amazing)

3. If your best strategy stopped working next month, how fast would you know?

I have defined health rules that would flag it within daysI'd notice in my P&L eventuallyI'd probably keep trading it and hope

4. How correlated are the strategies in your portfolio to each other?

I actively select for low correlation across marketsRoughly diversified, but I haven't measured itThey're mostly the same idea on different symbols

5. How did you decide your position size per strategy?

A defined sizing model tied to risk and accountA fixed number of contracts/lots that felt rightI haven't really thought about sizing

6. Do your backtests include realistic execution costs (commission + slippage)?

Yes — modeled per market, on entry and exitA flat estimate for everythingNo, results are gross

7. How large is the trade sample your strategy is built on?

Hundreds of trades across years of dataEnough to look convincing (100ish)Small — but the average trade is big

8. What happens to a strategy that starts underperforming in your process?

It follows a written rule: watch, then retireI use judgement, case by caseI add more size to 'catch the recovery'

9. How many genuinely uncorrelated strategies are you trading live?

Ten or more, deliberately combinedA handfulOne or two — this is basically it

10. Where does your edge come from?

A repeatable process I can apply to any marketA few setups that have worked for meIndicators/signals I found or bought

11. How do you handle a losing month emotionally?

The system is defined, so I mostly leave it aloneI get tempted to intervene but usually holdI tweak, pause, or override the rules

12. If someone asked to see your strategy's out-of-sample results, could you show them today?

Yes, clearly marked, in minutesI'd have to dig, but roughlyNot really

The Trading System Health Check