Adrian Reid says retail traders waste time on fundamentals when they should master technical backtesting first. After 25 years trading price and volume alone, he argues fundamentals aren't required for profit. Learn them later, once you've built a solid foundation.
What about fundamentals in backtests? Almost no one talks about them. Might be useful to include them. Yes, absolutely. If you can get them, it's getting easier too. It is now possible to backtest with fundamental data with certain online platforms. Portfolio123 is an example. You can backtest with fundamental data in Portfolio123. But 5 years ago, that sort of thing didn't really exist, certainly not at a sensible price for a retail trader. You don't need fundamentals to be profitable though, so I wouldn't let that be a barrier. It's much easier to backtest with technicals only, price and volume, and I've traded for 25 years using only technical-based systems, price and volume-based systems. So that definitely works. If you want to incorporate some fundamentals, you've just got to make sure that you've got all of the historical fundamentals and a platform that allows you to backtest it. So Portfolio 123 is one of those. I wouldn't start there though if you haven't gone down the whole backtesting journey. I think I would start with a technical-based system, a simple trend following, mean reversion based on price and volume movements, because you'll find it much easier to learn and then go and apply your knowledge to backtesting with fundamentals.
