Well done.

Every opinion may differ but I can only speak for myself coming into my fourth year automated and profitable for 2. 3-12 months for me depending on trade frequency/concept. Before I did this I had troubles and learnt about curve fitting..oh joy. Once you get a few validated you will not need to be in a hurry. Think of it as an assembly line process needing a concept>design>prototype>robustness testing>live. Sow seeds like a farmer, before you know it you’ll be reaping and sowing at the same time only to improve your yield.

CC

hi, I don’t know about about any general valid “rule of thumb” in that relation, but I think like CC as well that trade frequency matters a lot, and yet disregarding the frequency “time on the market” matters a lot as well. so my own rule is always to test a strategy for at least 3 months before increaseing position. I never test on “demo”, but live – with very minimum position in the beginning, and then increasing gradually if strategy seems to work according my expectations. new strategy does not have to earn lot of points during those 3 months to prove it works, yet my experience was that quite always those “not working” strategies deteriorate within 3 months systematically/consistently.

testing live, even with minimum position, has some substantial advantages: 1) even there is only little money behind – it’s still money and psychologically matters more than in case if there is no money behind your activities. 2) you see if algo works technically in live environment: some things which “work” in backtest environment don’t work live at all, or work differently that one thought 3) you have real costs (spread, slippage, overnight financing…), and if you trade cfd you have some other obstacles brokers might put on your way, like minimum stop distances which might stop your algo at unexpected time, so you miss trades which you don’t miss in backtest, so this is again kind of cost which you can’t even estimate.