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I'll answer these objections, but let's leave it at that. As far as my trading goes, I have long gone beyond the issue of entry for long term trend following and have no reason to revisit it - my view is that the real money for long term trend following is elsewhere (optimizing money management, which I have spent much time working on). I no longer have the psychological need nor energy to expend on converting others to my view.

1. The standard deviation and distribution of the results for both systems was much the same.

2. You can start the simulation on any date - the results come out basically the same. I remind you, however, that I used a 10 year date range to include a range of markets in the test.

3. Total number of trades was much the same, around 550 or so.

4. You're also missing the point that a breakout entry was NOT clearly and obviously superior to random entry.

The big problem with trend followers is that we remain convinced that we can add value to our systems by what is simply curve fitting and we will spend endless hours curve fitting the entry to give the best historical results (which paradoxically will likely give the worst results going forwards).

Long term trend following derives its edge purely and simply by cutting out the big losers whilst letting the big winners run. All the rest is window dressing to make us feel as if we have some degree of control over our results.

Accepting the fact that entry is mostly insignificant in long term trend following is highly liberating, and allows you to move beyond the "5%". I have come to accept, however, that the vast bulk of long term trend followers will never accept this, but as long as they honour their stops, they'll still be profitable.