Game On for Gamestop?

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Nov. 1 at 8:21 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

What if I said that you could become a more profitable trader without changing your approach to trading? Well, you can, but sadly few people pursue one simple way of doing that, and that's backtesting.

Simply stated, if you can define your approach via a mathematical algorithm, you can test that approach against historical data to see what set of parameters would have yielded the most profit.

For example, let's say your preference is to go long any breakouts where the closing price is 3% above the previous close. You had always assumed a 5% stop and 10% target were best, but upon testing those assumptions you find out a 7% stop and 4% target are best. ...