The best answers are the simple answers.

Want to be the best tennis player in the city?

Hit the ball in.

But what about grips? What about equipment? What about fitness? What about style of play? What about…? What about…?

Just hit it in. Forget everything else and hit it in. Every time.

It works.

And it always will work.

In system development, the advice is similar.

Just find simple systems (that aren’t perfect) and fit them together to make a robust whole.

Because the systems are simple, none of them will be great on their own. That’s okay. That’s preferable even.

Their imperfection is what makes them work. Remember, if they lose, they’re not curve-fit. If they’re not curve-fit, they’re robust.

And if you fit a bunch of robust systems together, you get something really robust.

That’s the theory anyway.

But most people don’t do it. I haven’t done it.

How can a portfolio of simple, imperfect systems be better than a portfolio of really good systems? 

It doesn’t make sense.

Or maybe I’m too obtuse to see I’m missing the Holy Grail.

Last week, we talked about some simple Band breakout systems.

None of them were great on their own. They were okay, not great.

But what if I put those not-great systems together?

That’s what I wanted to find out.

So, I did some testing and, yes, some optimizing, and I came up with 4 different pairs that all used the Band breakout system.

Then I fit them all together with Portfolio Architect.

Here’s the Report of those four pairs since 2003 using 1 lot each time: