If you’ve read any installments of Active Trader’s ongoing System Design series, you know building a viable trading strategy from scratch is more difficult than it seems. Strategy development is a marathon, not a sprint, but traders are often lured into chasing the latest approaches with the best-looking performance.

Unfortunately, this quest may cause traders to discard good but not great strategies. Sometimes, however, you might already have a viable strategy that simply needs an extra boost. Straightforward steps that can potentially enhance system performance include adding to open positions, exiting winning trades early with a profit target, or simply getting out after holding trades a certain amount of time.

The following examples show how and why a basic moving-average strategy can be improved without changing its basic trade-entry rules.