Jun

9

When we research strategies, there is a need to measure performance. Some techniques like volatility targeting tend to improve more the equity based measures (e.g. Sharpe, Sortino) but damage or not improve the trade based measures (e.g. Profit Factor, Expectancy). Some techniques like term structure used in asymmetric sizing tend to improve more the trade based measures. Is there any clear argument for or against equity vs. trade based performance statistics?

Rocky Humbert writes: 

Ed Seykota was fond of saying "Everyone gets what they want out of the markets."

That's an elegant way of saying that every investor has their own utility curve.

So an answer to your question is it depends on what portfolio/trade parameters that you are trying to maximize and minimize. Each of the approaches that you describe involves some sort of a trade-off. Academics will talk about optimally efficient frontiers, but for practitioners who are in the markets for the long run, I believe it's a function of what you and your investors want to achieve and most importantly, maintaining the discipline to consistently apply the tools that you mention.

There are many paths to heaven. There is no free lunch.

Bill Rafter writes: 

We prefer equity stats. Our primary metric for longer term research is (Compound Annual ROR)/(Max Drawdown). For example, the equities markets depending on the period chosen tend to have a CAROR in the single digits, while having max drawdowns of ~55 percent. With work and diversification you can invert those numbers such that the ratio is greater than 1. Most of your success will come as a result of reducing losses.

In theory one might argue that if you take care of the trade stats, the equity stats will take care of themselves. As in, fight the battles and the war will take care of itself. This is most exemplified by HFT. If that is the trading time frame of your choice, then by all means go with that. However it is hard for the individual to compete in the HFT framework, meaning that you will probably have to lengthen your trading, gleaning greater gains, but also larger losses. Eventually I think you will come around to preferring the equity stats. But your choice is going to be subjective or trading-plan-specific, which agrees with Rocky's every investor having their own utility curve.

anonymous writes: 

The conception of Seykota's quote as a utility curve is Rocky's. Seykota might have been making a point about market psychology more akin to a Deepak Chopra quote. That's not to say that Seykota did not make money trading. My sense was that his idea about everyone getting what they want from markets applied to those who might have hidden motivations in things other than in optimized financial gain according to a risk adjusted measure.


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