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I've run a portfolio of CFD strategies generated with StrategyQuant X for over 2 years, and I publish my results publicly.
I’m halfway through the year and sitting at a **23.6% return** on my master account. It’s been a great run since March, but the first three months were essentially a flatline, punctuated by a massive, heart-attack-inducing spike that I definitely didn’t intend.
I learned two massive lessons the hard way, and I figured I’d share them in case anyone else here is building their own algo systems.
# 1. Triple-check your live trade executions
I hit a weird spike in early March because of a bug in my code. I run my strategies with a strict **0.25% risk per trade**, but for my Japanese stock index strategies, the code was accidentally firing at **2-3% risk**. Instead of my usual $500–$600 per trade, I was suddenly risking $3,000–$4,000. It worked out to the upside initially, but it was pure luck, followed by a brutal dip. If you’re trading, audit your MT5 backtests—I would’ve caught the math error immediately if I’d actually paid closer attention to those logs.
# 2. Tick data testing is mandatory
My performance for the first quarter of the year was just going sideways. However, when I backtested the strategies, I should've been up. So the backtests and the live results weren't matching.
Here's the thing: for a long time, I was only running my backtests on 1-minute resolution data. My logic was that because these are intraday breakout strategies with trade durations of a few hours, the resolution wouldn't matter. I was wrong.
When I finally forced all my strategies through a **tick data test**, the ones that weren't matching my backtests showed massive performance degradation. I made tick data cross-checking a mandatory part of my workflow, and once I cut the strategies that failed that test, my performance smoothed out and my rolling monthly Sharpe ratio jumped above 2.0.
Overall:
June was my best month yet at **13.39%**, and I'm feeling a lot more confident now that my backtests actually reflect live conditions. This portfolio has been running for over 2 years, and I'm trying to be as transparent as possible.