In finance, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets.
They are usually verified by backtesting, where the process should follow the scientific method, and by forward testing (a.k.a.
[8][9] Who conversely should maintain a long-term horizon avoiding any types of short term speculation.
The choice of the risk-reward trade-off strongly depends on trader's risk preferences.
Often the performance is measured against a benchmark, the most common one is an Exchange-traded fund on a stock index.
First online related trading activity and rapid growth of electronic commerce started in 1997–98.