Strategy hopping versus moving on.
The line between them, and the documentation habit that decides which one you’re doing.
Strategy hopping is the cardinal sin. But moving on from a strategy that has run out of road is just research. The difference is not the switch, it’s the timing.
Nobody abandons a strategy while it’s printing money. They abandon it in a drawdown. Traded options for a month, hit a rough patch, now they’re in forex. That’s not a decision, that’s a flinch, and the drawdown is the worst possible moment to make it.
The legitimate version looks different. Progress has stalled for a measured stretch, or the next hundred hours of work buys maybe two percent, while an unexplored idea sits there. That’s marginal utility, and it’s a defensible reason.
The part most traders skip is the cost of switching. Dave’s analogy: your work lives at the bottom of the ocean, and it takes real time to get down there. Switch strategies and you surface, swim, and dive again somewhere else. Come back in a year with a light-bulb moment and you can’t find the seabed at all.
So document before you leave. Why you stopped, what the roadblock was, the path that got you there. It’s ten minutes, and it’s what lets a future insight actually land somewhere.
If you’d rather have the systems already built and running while you research, that’s Stats Edge Pro. $149.99 a month, 30-day money-back guarantee.
Michael Nauss, CMT, CAIA, CDMS