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“Well duh, a good backtesting results is when you make 1,000,000% return.”

That’s what many new traders think and that’s why over 90% of traders fail.

If you want to become a successful trader, you’re going to have to learn how properly evaluate a trading strategy and adjust your perception of what is a good backtesting result. 

Spoiler alert: Most successful trading strategies start off as mediocre or even poor. 

But through continual testing and iteration, they are made into profitable strategies.

Just like successful traders are made, not born…successful strategies require an investment of time and effort.

Where to Start

The first thing to understand about backtesting is that almost all successful trading strategies didn’t start out that way. 

A great trading strategy is just like any great invention.

It starts with an idea and the inventor wants to solve a problem.

Traders want to solve the problem of making money consistently in the markets.

You will probably have to refine your trading strategy idea to make it profitable.

Once you understand that trading strategies rarely start off as profitable, it then makes sense that breakeven backtesting or slightly profitable results can actually be a good thing. 

If a strategy is breakeven (or close to it), then you just might have to do a few tweaks to get it to profitable.

Many times, experimenting with money management or exits can make a strategy profitable.

With that in mind, here are more details on what to look for in your testing results.

Historical Data Used in Backtests

Before I get into analyzing your actual backtesting results, one important thing to consider is how much historical data was used in your backtests.

Many backtesting platforms only give you 1 or 2 years of backtesting data.

This is not nearly enough to figure out how a strategy will perform over different market conditions and cycles.

So when you’re backtesting, get as much historical data as possible.

Define a Review Period

Once you have a lot of historical data to test with, be sure to define your review period for your strategies.

If you are creating a strategy on the daily chart, you might want to review the returns on a yearly basis.

Now if you’re testing on the 1 hour chart, you should probably review your monthly results.

Then figure out your average return per your review time period.

You probably won’t be profitable in every review period, but you want to see what type of drawdowns you’ll have to endure and what to expect from the trading strategy.

This analysis will allow you to compare trading strategies in an objective manner and judge which strategies you may want to pursue and which ones to drop.

Set a Goal

Now it’s time to figure out what matters to you.

A “good” trading strategy has to be good for you and nobody else.

It won’t necessarily be the most profitable or the most consistent.

But if it meets your income needs, then that’s all that matters.

A word of caution here…

Many traders (myself included) start out with unrealistic goals for their strategies.

So set a goal, but you might find yourself having to adjust what you expect out of one trading strategy.

You might have to trade several trading strategies or markets to get the results you’re looking for.

Don’t get discouraged however, if you keep working the results will come.

How to Identify Trading Strategies with Potential

There are 3 basic types of backtesting results:

1. Terrible
2. Breakeven
3. Profitable

Now I’ll define each and show you what to look for in each.

A Terrible Backtesting Result

This one is obvious.

If the strategy loses 80% of the account or more, then you probably shouldn’t spend any more time with it.

The strategy above lost 99.82% from 2009 to 2024.

That’s as bad as it gets.

Trying to optimize a strategy with a terrible result is like polishing the brass on the Titanic.

It’s best to move on and use your time and brain power to create a new strategy.

A Breakeven Backtesting Result

Here’s where things get exciting. 

Most new traders will throw away a breakeven strategy, but not you because you’re reading this article.

A breakeven strategy can potentially be optimized and made much more profitable.

It might just need a tweak or two to work well.

Here are some questions to ask when trying to improve a strategy:

• Can you eliminate the biggest losers easily?
• Do losing trades have a common characteristic? Maybe they go longer than 2 days or they are taken during a certain time of day.
• What happens if you set a bigger profit target?
• Can you increase your stop loss, while risking the same percentage of your account, so you don’t get stopped out so often?
• Will using a trailing stop loss improve your results?
• How do your results change of you increase or decrease your risk per trade? It may be counterintuitive, but lowering your risk per trade can sometimes increase your total return.

Those are the major things to consider when trying to improve the performance of a strategy.

But don’t stop there, what else can you think of?

A Profitable Backtesting Result

Now we get to the result that everyone is looking for, a profitable result on the first try.

It doesn’t happen often, but it is possible.

I’ve only had a hugely profitable result on the first try…twice.

But even if your results were profitable, you can’t stop there. 

You need to double check your results.

Real world trading could vary dramatically from backtesting results if you don’t account for everything.

Consider the following:

• Did you properly account for commissions, spread, slippage and fees?
• Will you be awake to take trades when they setup?
• Did you follow the trading plan?
• Did you run a Monte Carlo simulation to see your maximum potential drawdown?

Once you’ve verified that your results are good in a program like NakedMarkets, Forex Tester or FX Replay, congratulations, you now have a profitable trading strategy.

Now it’s time to move on to Forward Testing to be sure it works.

This is a key step to making absolutely sure that your strategy works before risking your full trading capital.

But don’t stop there.

Continue to test ways to potentially make your strategy better.

See if you can increase the return or decrease the drawdowns.

Pick the one that’s more important to you.

Consider trading 2 or 3 versions of your strategy at the same time to diversify your risk.

Once you’re trading your strategy with your full-sized account, then you can repeat the process to find another profitable strategy.

Final Thoughts

Again, you probably won’t get a super profitable backtesting result on your first try.

The key is to be able to spot the diamonds in the rough.

From there, you can work on developing each strategy to its maximum potential.

It’s also important to be able to figure out which strategies will never work and stop trying to improve them right away.

Remember that trading strategies usually tend to perform a little worse in real life.

So account for that and don’t get too excited about a huge return.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with a conversation that we had about this topic on the Think Profit Podcast.

It will give you more ideas on what to look for when you’re backtesting.

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The sudden awakening of old Bitcoin (BTC) whale wallets may be linked to a hack, according to on-chain analysis by Coinbase director Conor Grogan. 

Posting on the social media platform X, Grogan makes several observations about last week’s sudden movement of whale wallets holding $8 billion in BTC after lying dormant for more than 14 years. 

Grogan notes that one of the wallets appears to have made a test transaction on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network just hours before the big move happened, suggesting that whoever was responsible for the transfer was trying to go unnoticed.

“There is a small possibility that the $8 billion in BTC that recently woke up were hacked or compromised private keys

I found a single BCH test transaction from one of the BTC whale clusters… followed by the full amount. An hour later, the BTC wallets began to move. 

There is a possibility that the owner was testing the private key in a way that wouldn’t get noticed, as BCH isn’t monitored heavily by whale-watching services

What makes me say this is the other BCH wallets have not been touched at all; why wouldn’t they also sweep these?

This is all extreme speculation, but the movements are extremely odd here. I do not think that this is an exchange wallet due to the BCH activity, and given the BTC transfers appear to be all manual.”

Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin. Wallets that held BTC before the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork may also hold the same amount of BCH.

Grogan appears to be suggesting that the BCH test transfer could have been the hacker’s way of checking whether they had access to the wallet before transferring the massive BTC stack.

The wallets in question first accumulated Bitcoin when BTC was trading at $0.78.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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Joe McCann, a hedge fund founder with experience of more than 25 years, has been up to some interesting research as far as meme coin investing is concerned. His flagship fund, called the Technology Master Fund, is ranked third in the world in terms of 12-month cumulative returns. This is as of March 2024.

When the world was jumping into trending meme coins, McCann developed a pretty unique method of catching the bull by its horns. He merged the traditional Wall Street methods of mitigating risk and the frenzy of the meme market to build a new ‘Meme Street’ investing ethos.

McCann believes that one of the key skills of a trader is to stay as unemotional as possible, especially when the markets are tanking. If not, it can lead to very poor trading decisions.

Plus, seeing as the memecoin market is filled to the brim with euphoria, it can be very difficult for investors to get a hold of their thoughts. This is where a more risk-measured and systemic approach like Meme Street comes in handy.

What Are the Rules of Meme Street?

The biggest difficulty in trading meme coins for institutional investors is liquidity. That’s why McCann only takes large exposure in blue-chip meme coins. These are the biggest cryptocurrencies that have maintained over $1B market cap mark for at least 90 days.

Another rule of Meme Street is to limit the exposure of the entire fund to just 2% for coins that are not a part of the top 20% of the total crypto market cap.

Once these ground rules have been established, McCann goes on to analyze the best meme coins just as any other asset class using technical analysis and data.

McCann’s $BONK Trade

In 2023, McCann observed that stablecoin funds were flowing from Ethereum to Solana. Now, Solana had not crossed the $30 mark for the most part of 2023. A shift in funds could have helped $SOL hold its resistance and see the prices soar, which is exactly what happened.

Now, investors would use this game to park their funds in high-beta coins for a steep risk-to-reward possibility. The challenge was to find out which asset investors would sit on. McCann placed his bet on $BONK, which, lo and behold, saw a massive rally in Q4 2023.

Exiting a position is also crucial. Now, since Bonk was still in a price discovery mode, there were no technical indicators to suggest an exit. To solve this, McCann started studying real-time order flows to see if there is any slowdown in Solana’s inflows.

McCann built a system that could identify large order flows into a particular asset (say Solana) and then use this information to decipher whether this flow can be attributed to accumulation or distribution. If data suggested distribution trends, it would be safe to exit a meme coin trade.

McCann’s Outlook for 2025

McCann is bullish on Bitcoin and Solana in 2025, primarily due to increasing institutional interest. Several countries have been aggressively buying $BTC as a part of their strategic reserves. Solana, on the other hand, is a cheaper, faster, and more user-friendly alternative to Ethereum.

However, he also has a word of caution for those looking to buy into hype for quick gains. McCann believes the period of easy money is over, and only strategic traders will survive in 2025.

Investing in meme coins doesn’t have to be super risky, especially when a systemic investing method similar to Meme Street is now launching for meme coins. Enter Meme Index ($MEMEX).

What Is $MEMEX?

Meme Index ($MEMEX) brings the good old stock market concept of index funds to meme coins. It offers a total of four different meme coin baskets, each with a varying degree of volatility, risk, and profit potential.

Depending on your risk appetite and analysis (a slow market would mean you should go for safer investments, for instance), you can choose one or more $MEMEX baskets.

Needless to say, these meme coin baskets, even the riskiest Meme Frenzy one, significantly reduce the total amount of risk you put on by diversifying your investment across various coins.

So, you’re less likely to go bust if a meme coin doesn’t perform as well. Because others in the basket will still ensure you end up in green.

Why Can $MEMEX Be the Next Crypto to 100x?

As McCann said, the current market conditions aren’t screaming bullishness, meaning ‘buy and HODL’ wouldn’t probably work as well as it does in bullish conditions. Times like these require smart investing. Exactly what $MEMEX brings to the table.

Furthermore, investors who have been so far skeptical of entering the meme coin space because of its volatility and dare we say pump-and-dump nature will consider $MEMEX as their chance to finally set foot in meme coins.

For more information, check out $MEMEX’s whitepaper and its X feed.

Meme Index is currently in presale, where it has already raised over $3.8M. You can get 1 $MEMEX for just $0.0164239 if you get in now, but hurry up because prices increase in the next 18 hours. If this is your first crypto presale purchase, here’s a guide on how to buy $MEMEX.

As always, we urge you to do your own research before investing your hard-earned money. The crypto and memecoin markets, after all, are quite volatile and unpredictable in the short term. Also, this article isn’t a substitute for professional financial advice.