Backtesting a playbook

I have been trading for about a year now with pretty unflattering results. I would say I can tread water at the moment using no real concrete system other than some TA paired with a familiarity of the markets. I have been running swing trading backtests on the free sites out there which have given me a lot of good results (beating the s&p over a 10 year time frame) with at most 6% drawdown. I was curious how many successful traders rely on their backtests to develop their overall strategy and how much credence can really be given to the results of these?

I trade a small account so at the moment I have nothing in my budget for subscriptions/education to teach me processes. I'm striving to develop a set of processes I can put into the finviz screener and after a little further discretion take up to 20 or so long positions with 5% of my portfolio (each position) holding 5 trading sessions give or take for overall profit. I would love to give Metastocks a try but as I said, theres just no way to justify the costs with the size of my account at the moment...

I am in a lot of facebook trading groups (which I am getting pretty sick of) and I noticed nobody ever talks about the process(es) the use, nor backtests for that matter. It seems like a bunch of useless chatter where there may be one profitable trader (usually the creator of the group). Hoping to get some good feedback here.

 

Any particular reason for the Dow vs. S&P?

I don't put much weight at all into the facebook groups. I see new traders coming in and posting totally newbie questions one week, then a few weeks later they are giving advice out to other members... It's just the few individuals who have floor experience that keep me interested. Otherwise very distracting!