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Why test data only back to 2002?

Newbie question: Just curious why the test data only goes back to 2002? It is because....

  1. This sort of trading does not focus on the longer term; i.e., testing over a longer period would not show any fundamental performance differences
  2. There is no need to see how an algo performs through more than one recession
  3. The "great recession" is the best benchmark against which to test
  4. Other?
2 responses

Q may say otherwise but its probably just a balance between quantity/quality/cost of the database. I'd be interested in having more than one "great recession" to backtest against though.

I think it would be interesting to test performance through the "regular ole' recessions" in the early 80s, 90s, and 00s...