Hi Abz
You mentioned an important fact “systems doing good for many months and then just reverse into non profit” – this happens very often and – me included – many traders/programmers burned a lot of money.
Here is what I do:
first of all I develop and test my strategy on a demo account
i have no time pressure so i can monitor the results closly
the system must work well in sideways, up and down phases
as soon as the system has a positive ratio of for example 1,50 or above it’s a candidate to golive
then i start with small cfd lots to see the behaviour in realmarket – remember – in realmarkets you have an order book (buyers and sellers) – it can happen that your order will not be filled due lack of pending orders in the book
depending on my money management i increase the lot size
i hope this helps a bit
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