🗓️ How long before you can fairly judge a strategy?
A week of results is noise, not evidence.
You need enough trades for the strategy's actual edge to separate from randomness.
A strategy trading 3 times weekly produces ~12 trades a month.
At that count, a single outlier trade can swing your entire result.
Both a great month and a terrible one are statistically meaningless.
▶️ The threshold: roughly 30 to 50 trades before returns carry any signal.
For most strategies, that's 2 to 3 months.
📌 One exception: behavioral fit. Whether you can hold through this strategy's drawdowns and quiet stretches is clear within about two weeks.
Judge the fit early. Judge the returns late. Confusing the two is how good strategies get abandoned.
A week of results is noise, not evidence.
You need enough trades for the strategy's actual edge to separate from randomness.
A strategy trading 3 times weekly produces ~12 trades a month.
At that count, a single outlier trade can swing your entire result.
Both a great month and a terrible one are statistically meaningless.
▶️ The threshold: roughly 30 to 50 trades before returns carry any signal.
For most strategies, that's 2 to 3 months.
📌 One exception: behavioral fit. Whether you can hold through this strategy's drawdowns and quiet stretches is clear within about two weeks.
Judge the fit early. Judge the returns late. Confusing the two is how good strategies get abandoned.
