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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical Analysis - Beginners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Estes who wrote (7871)	1/18/1998 12:32:00 AM
From: shasta23	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12039

HI Richard! I feel a little bit funny to ask but "why do i need at least 2 years -better more -of data for valid system testing?" Through Dave Evans posts i started looking into system testing (just a few days ago) and i know that a lot of people have stated that the more data the better. Let me explain what was going through my head: Ok, i'm not looking for the perfect system but for a system that works with the stocks i choose. Therefore i choose -just like Dave or you - stocks that are on the move. IBD 80/80 or the stocks that fall out of the BBB scan are an example. But when i look back at the charts of these fast movers i see that a lot of them were 3 years ago in a trading range. Look at IBM from 1990-1993. So why would i need the data for these time periods for my system testing since under these conditions the stock would not have been in my database at the time. I hope you understand what i mean! It's more like that i'm not really interested in testing my system for a time period when the stock i test it on was rangebound and would've never been in my database. It would only be in the database when it's trending and that's when my system should work. The only thing i could see if to test older data when the stock was in trending mode at that time. So, what am i missing in the picture here. Could you give me a hint? I ask you because you always seem such a strong proponent of system testing and seem to have a lot of experience with it. Thanks for any help... Stefan