It’s going to be no surprise to hear the best currency trading systems are the ones which make money! The problem is simply the simplest way to identify which ones those are, and particularly, the easiest way to choose which system will work the best for an individual trader, i.e. You. First let’s rule out some systems that never earn cash for anyone, at least not in the long run. These are the type of systems that gamblers sometimes call loss recovery systems. The idea is that if your last trade lost, then your next is likelier to win, so you take a larger position. Stats disprove it every time. Gamblers lose their shirts on these systems and it’d be crazy for a currency exchange trader to employ a system like that.
So with that rant out of the way, let’s take a look at how to identify a lucrative system. Edge is the measure of a system’s returns over a time period. It’s a easy calculation but you do need a reasonable number of results to determine it from. Back testing is a good technique to get those results. Edge is just the likelihood of a win multiplied by the average profit on a winning trade, minus the chance of a loss multiplied by the average loss on a bad trade. Results are calculated after taking away the spread and any other per trade costs.