Hi Wayfarer,
You can use the Validator in EA Studio. Simply load your Portfolio EA, remove all Acceptance Criteria, Robustness and Optimizer Tools, and hit the Start button. All of the strategies in the Portfolio EA will load into the Collection. From there, delete the strategies you no longer want to use. Then, you can create a new Portfolio EA from the Collection of strategies that remain. Just remember to empty your collection beforehand if you have any strategies in it. You can also change the date range in Data Horizon, and select performance filters to check which strategies performed best during a certain time period.
To maintain risk diversity, as you say, you need multiple assets, preferably in the same quantity. If one asset performs better than the others, simply select fewer of the better performing asset. For example, if you have 4 EURUSD EAs that are performing well but only 2 EURJPY and 2 EURGBP, check which of the 4 EURUSD performed the best, and select the top 2, so you have 2 EAs in each of the assets. Petko and I are releasing a course in the next few days that addresses this in detail. We will show you the process I follow, and it will include the spreadsheet that I use, as a downloadable resource to make managing your EAs much easier.
Your third question really comes down to personal choice. Obviously, if an EA is in a draw down period due to market conditions, you should remove it. Again, this is discussed in detail in the upcoming course. Personally, on my accounts, if an EA has not reached a profit factor of 1.4 and at least 3 trades for a period of 7 days AND 30 days, I do not use it in my live trading account. Because the EAs that are currently on my live account all come from my demo accounts, I only monitor and analyze my demo accounts. Once I have selected the EAs I will be copying from my demo accounts to my live account, I delete all of the EAs on my live account, whether they performed well or not, and copy the selected EAs from my demo account to my live account, and ‘restart’ my live trading. I do this weekly.
Again, this is just the system that I currently use. It’s what I have found works well for me and the criteria I need to be comfortable. We are always testing new ideas and trading systems. But, risk diversification is vital, and you should always try to keep a balanced portfolio. The profits may be less if one particular asset does very well for a period, but it also (and in my opinion more importantly) lessens the risk.
Cheers,
Ilan