I would add that achieving proficiency in system trading is an art in itself and takes many years of experience to develop a good "portfolio" of systems. If there were any single piece of advice to give, it would be "reductio ad absurdum." Don't optimize, minimize your parameter sets, and look for a confluence of price patterns.

The M System is a pattern combination system. It simply looks for bars that exhibit two or more characteristics of a similar bias either bullish or bearish. The system scans for hooks (H), tails (L), tests (T), pullbacks (P), and many other patterns.