Having reviewed the recent change that I’m sure the P123 team spent a lot of time on, I find myself disappointed.
I am a consumer of developed models, using 7 fee based models and 1 ‘free’ model. I also have 3 prototype live models I developed that are running OOS so I can see how they perform before committing money to them. When I first joined, I appreciated the P123 site and the R2G concept as it allowed me to ‘outsource’ the model development to talented people who may approach the market from a perspective which may not be my strength. This has allowed me to diversify my portfolio in style (value, momentum, etc.), and concepts (hedging, mkt timing, etc.).
As a consumer, there was no doubt in my mind that curve fitting models existed in R2G. However, it’s not always evident given the relatively short time span of R2G and overall market conditions that may be affecting model performance. Getting to know the model designer through a willingness to share their development process and their promptness in answering specific questions helped alleviate some concerns, but the OOS performance vs IS performance will eventually shed light on curve fitting.
So while I applaud the P123 effort to discern and refocus designers away from any curve fitting benefit, the approach to this change and end result has left me as a consumer disappointed.
Through the community board, I got the sense the only input sought by P123 was from designers and how they may react to the change given how their models were about to be re-represented on the site. Perhaps I missed it, but did P123 ever reach out to the consumers (i.e.; customers) of these model products and ask them what was important?
I personally used a lot of the chart features such as date range input so I could focus in on specific timeframes and see how the model handled that period of time… IS or OOS. The model analytical data such as win%, average return win, average return loss were also important to me to calculate system expectancy. I would like to have this type of data broken out by IS and OOS but it didn’t exist in the previous version. Yearly return and DD data was important so I could calculate Asymmetric ratios… again IS or OOS.
While I understand not everyone may use these features or data analytics, it is important to me the customer as it is the method I used to help discern IS vs. OOS performance. P123 and others may not even agree with the method I use, but that’s not the point. The point being that it seems P123 arbitrarily took away features and data without seeking what their current R2G consumers wanted in this change.