Stop Chasing the Holy Grail: Let Each Bot Do the Job It's Built For

I've been buried in building a trading bot lately: Sora.

It started with a pain point. In some trade setups, the support or resistance level I'd waited all day for never got hit. Then, having missed the ride, I'd watch the market take off into a beautiful trend without me. So I went looking for an indicator that was simple, quick to react to the price trend and good in trends, and settled on Supertrend as the core. But just buying when the trend turns up and selling when it turns down felt too easy, so I added higher timeframes: D1 for the trend, H1 for structure, and M5 plus price action for entries. I really wanted it to be a sharp, precise trend-following bot.

Then I actually backtested it. Seeing the stretches where it lost to the market got to me (and stung a little, ha), so I kept staring at it and tweaking. Should I add more indicators? ADX, maybe? Another filter here and there, so it wouldn't get fooled in sideways markets? Filter one… filter two… But the harder I tried to make it dodge the sideways markets, the more it refused to enter when a clean trend finally came along! It turned into a half-and-half system: it didn't catch the trends fully, and it didn't survive the ranges either.

Then it hit me. Wait… why am I trying to make a fish fly, or a bird swim? I designed Sora to be a trend follower (said the second voice in my head). So what's wrong with it losing in market conditions that aren't its game?

That was it. I told myself to stop hunting for the Holy Grail, already. No bot wins in every market. A trend bot will lose in choppy markets sometimes, of course. Instead of wasting time staring and tweaking until the bot is confused, go to bed… I mean, add another strategy that suits sideways markets, and let each strategy do its own job.

My job is just to manage risk so each strategy survives when the market isn't on its side: clear TP and SL, Drawdown kept under control, and both types of bot (or more) running side by side so they hold the portfolio up together. When the trend bot is losing, the sideways bot makes profit to make up for it. And you get to see clearly what each strategy does when it's allowed to work at full strength.

Accept your strategies' strengths and weaknesses, then put each bot on the right job… and then you can go to bed.

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