Methods for Mitigating Data Snooping Bias

What methods are available to suppress data snooping bias derived from testing multiple strategies/strategy variations on the same set of historical data? Which methods are best? In their March 2018 paper entitled “Systematic Testing of Systematic Trading Strategies”, Kovlin Perumal and Emlyn Flint survey statistical methods for suppressing data snooping bias and compare effectiveness of these methods on simulated asset return data and artificial trading rules. They choose a Jump Diffusion model to simulate asset return data, because it reasonably captures volatility and jumps observed in real markets. They define artificial trading rules simply in terms of probability of successfully predicting next-interval return sign. They test the power of each method by: (1) measuring its ability not to choose inaccurate trading rules; and, (2) relating confidence levels it assigns to strategies to profitabilities of those strategies. Using the specified asset return data and trading rule simulation approaches, they conclude that: (more…)