the most valuable concepts to master are the intangibles. patience, discipline, and courage, are all forms of 'edge' as a discretionary trader quants can't fathom that you can use these things to your benefit they don't understand that one would STOP using a trend-based system in a ranging market or that a profitable 'RSI trader' would ignore the 87 times it fires an 'overbought' signal during an uptrend into new ATHs those thoughts are merely too complex [no they're not]. as a discretionary trader, you will never be able to quantify your system. so attempting to fit it into someone else's definitions is only doing yourself a disservice your desk, which is messy to someone else, makes sense to you and allows you to get your work done efficiently - that's all that matters. so stop allowing others to tell you what can or can't do. they cannot quantify it, so they project assumptions onto you. if you ever needed validation that your strategy works, simply check your PnL on any timeframe > a year results don't lie.