One of the things I have noticed during the 20 years I have spent either actively investing in various strategies, or trialing them, is that the ones which make logical sense usually are the ones which work best in real life.
There are so many investment strategies I get offered I could probably spend 2 life times working through them all. And a small fortune working out which ones don’t work. What I have found though is you can short cut this process simply by looking logically at them. Quite often when you robustly go through the logic of an investment strategy you will find holes in it. And big holes too, holes that will make you lose your money.
Most strategies presented to you will make sense. They have to or you would disregard them as nonsense. This is not what I am talking about though. The concern discussed in this article is logical completeness. If a strategy does not cover all possible scenarios you may come across, it will not take long before you find one of those scenarios. And when you do find a scenario which is not covered by your strategy, all of a sudden you need to make decisions outside the strategy. You will probably be left scratching your head or guessing.
When I am in this situation, where I have to make a decision outside a strategy I am trading because the strategy does not offer me guidance, I believe I am gambling. This is not good. I may make the right decision, but then again, I may lose my money. In all good investment strategies, you should not have to do this. You should simply plan the trade, and then trade the plan. There should not be room for guess work.
Also, the point about trialing a strategy is that you are finding out whether it will make consistent returns over the fullness of time. The point about trading a strategy is that you know it makes consistent returns over the fullness of time. If you have had a guess mid way through the strategy, you cannot be confident its the strategy or your guess which is making the money. You will need to start again.
So if someone presents you a trading strategy, go through the logic with a fine tooth comb. See if you can come up with scenarios which may happen in real life, which the strategy deos not cover. If you can think of some, try to get answers for these scenarios before you start trading with real money. Because believe me, if such scenarios exist, as soon as you put money down they will come up. I think 2007 – 2009 taught us all that.
And don’t forget to dummy trade before you put any money down. When you are dummy trading you will most likely find a bunch of trading scenarios you never thought about before. Make sure these are covered by the logic of the strategy too. Its much easier to sort this stuff out without money, than when you have money on the line.
