Question for Merlin

Merlin,

I've been wrestling with the "curve-fitting" problem for several months. Even with a linear positive curve backtested for 7 years, I can't feel good about it.

So, I say to you, "What can a guy do besides trade technicals?" Because technicals are essentially a form of curve fitting.... IE) Waiting for math modeled criteria to be met, and then trading.

So, what do the 1KTers do that is different?

Thanks.

Below: 13,000 pips (1/01 - 1/08), forward test +1,100 pips (10 months)

I'm obviously not Merlin, but here's what I found...

It depends what you mean by 'feeling uncomfortable', if it means that your systems are not generalizing well then you need to decrease your system's degrees of freedom. Also (you may well already know this), but the most profitable parameter set on the optimization interval my not be the profitable on walk forward, in fact the most profitable parameter set on the optimization interval is often the worst curve fit.