As you grow, there are always holes in your portfolio you can plug. There is market behaviors and scenarios that you could dream up that your portfolio may not do brilliantly well in. Thus, you could create a system to address that. There’s always the benefit of adding more, but there is a diminishing benefit. Adding one system is way better than no system, and two systems are way better than one system, but 11 systems are not way better than 10. But the threshold becomes how well you can execute the systems without making mistakes?

Therefore, if you get so many systems that you start tripping over yourself, making mistakes, missing signals, dropping trades, or executing poorly, you have too many systems.

That’s probably, for most people, the thing to watch. You’ve got to execute well. I found myself in a situation where my lifestyle and the number of systems I was trading were not compatible, and I started making mistakes, so I paired and reduced the complexity. Therefore, it’s important to monitor and be honest about yourself.

author avatar
Adrian Reid Founder and CEO
Adrian is a full-time private trader based in Australia and also the Founder and Trading Coach at Enlightened Stock Trading, which focuses on educating and supporting traders on their journey to profitable systems trading. Following his successful adoption of systematic trading which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using just 30 minutes a day to manage his system trading workflow, Adrian made the easy decision to leave his professional work in the corporate world in 2012. Adrian trades long/short across US, Australian and international stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets. His trading systems are now fully automated and have consistently outperformed international share markets with dramatically reduced risk over the past 20+ years. Adrian focuses on building portfolios of profitable, stable and robust long term trading systems to beat market returns with high risk adjusted returns. Adrian teaches traders from all over the world how to get profitable, confident and consistent by trading systematically and backtesting their own trading systems. He helps profitable traders grow and smooth returns by implementing a portfolio of trading systems to make money from different markets and market conditions.