What if I told you it was possible to be up over 30% year to date trading just QQQ about once every other day. Sound boring? And the only thing you had to do was to turn on your computer\u2014well, not the only thing\u2014and that you would have to have a thoroughly tested trading system first. And if you did, here is what your year might have looked like (the results are from a backtest using one of our trading systems, and are net of commissions and net of assumed slippage of a penny per share since the trades didn\u2019t actually occur):<\/p>\n
| Month<\/td>\n | Return*<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Jan<\/td>\n | 1.95%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Feb<\/td>\n | 3.61<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Mar<\/td>\n | (2.27)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Apr<\/td>\n | (4.42)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| May<\/td>\n | 1.16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Jun<\/td>\n | 0.97<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Jul<\/td>\n | 7.27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Aug<\/td>\n | 6.05<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Sep<\/td>\n | 13.91<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Oct MTD<\/td>\n | 0.69<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| YTD<\/td>\n | 31.50%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n So let\u2019s think about this: why is system trading something that might be interesting to all of us?<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For most new traders, it takes countless hours of screen time to achieve a steady income, let alone one with lots of zeroes. And many never make it past the most rudimentary levels on their own.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For more experienced traders, daily stock selection is of utmost importance because in today\u2019s market where high-frequency trading dominates the volume, it is becoming more and more difficult to trade more than a handful of names every day.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And for the most experienced traders making big bets every day, wouldn\u2019t it be nice to have a steady income in the background so you can focus on the really important things that computers just can\u2019t do. The tens of thousands of hours of screen time have patterned your brain in certain ways that cannot be matched by a computer.<\/p>\n System trading lets us address all these issues:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Building and testing a trading system is not just throwing together a few of your favorite indicators. It takes a substantial amount of development and more importantly, testing, to be sure that it really does what you expect in all market conditions and in all the timeframes that you trade.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are basically three ways to use a trading system:<\/p>\n
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