I currently focus my trading on Australia's top 300 stocks, the ASX300. The problem is that, in backtesting any system on those stocks I feel that I am introducing an unhelpful survivorship bias. That is, the simple fact that a particular stock is currently in Australia's top 300 suggests that over the past six years or so it has probably done better than the market in general. I am certain that the ASX300 list today is completely different to that which existed six years ago.

I'm looking for suggestions on how I overcome this shortcoming?

I could try and establish the stocks that constituted the list six years ago and use that for my backtesting. That sounds sensible but I think might be difficult to actually find the list.

I guess I could broaden my backtesting to a much broader range of stocks but that also seems to be counterproductive unless I intend to actually trade that much broader range, which I don't.

Can anyone help?

John

thanks Richard, I'll give it a go.

John