When I first read this thread I thought the experience attribute was pretty fair, but delving further into the stats of my Darwin OGL, I am starting to question my initial assessment. I'm beginning to think longer term strategies are treated unfairly, yet the attribute is supposed to compare 'apples-to-apples':
" The first is comparing experience apples-to-apples across strategies. A scalping strategy with 5 D-Periods proves the same experience as a swing strategy with 5 D-Periods - despite radically different trading styles. "
After noticing I'd only accrued .57 D-Periods in 3 months and that it would take me on average 123.6 calendar days to accrue a D-Period (a whopping 4 years to reach a 10 in experience!), I thought I'd look into just how active my bot had been since inception:
OGAlphaEA was launched on March 1, the first trade occurred on March 3.
Since then, my EA has taken 18 trades.
The shortest trade was 9 hours and 14 minutes, the two longest trades were 7 calendar days each, and the average trade duration was 4 calendar days.
If we multiply total trades by average duration, we see that my bot had positions open for a total of 72 calendar days since March 1.
Since March 1 there has been a total of 99 calendar days.
Therefore, my EA had positions open 73% of the time (this is likely a little overstated due to occasional trade overlap).
As you can see, my EA was actually quite active during this time, even if we over account for occasional overlap, it is safe to say that I had positions open more often than not. Yet according to Darwinex, in the 99 calendar days since inception, my bot only accrued 12.5 days of trading experience.
Now I don't want the Experience IA to count time when you are not trading, I think we all agree that is impractical at best; but in this case at least, Darwinex is clearly not giving enough credence to times when you are trading. We can argue about whether or not being flat is a measurable trading decision or not, but it is very hard to argue that holding onto a position is not a trading decision worthy of experience:
My two trades that were held for 7 days netted 213 and 198 pips, 7.73% and 7.92%. My shortest trade lost 35 pips, -1.8%. There is a reason we "let our winners run".
I conclude with the assertion that trade duration isn't given enough credence, which makes an unfair playing field for longer term traders. As experience is so important when it comes to D-Score, Darwinia etc, I think this is seriously something that should be looked at and addressed as appropriate. @bianka @ignacio @Vladi
Would love to hear other provider's thoughts and feel free to point out any errors in my logic!