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Dans un courrier daté du 23/07/98 01:07:13 , Tim Morge écrit :
<< Pierre:
Can you share with us what positive influences you have had in your career?
Can
you point answer the original question? It might be interesting for us all to
see what you value from your past education [I mean that in all sincerity].
I'd also like to hear what TC feels was valuable in his past.
Best,
Tim Morge [Who is still pondering his own answer]
>>
Well, it's a difficult task, as your are asking to me a kind of judgement on
myself.
I also assume that you are thinking of a trading / system development career,
not my original job that has been teaching physical and chemistry for 15 years
More than any external influence, I suffer of some failures:
I usually have one major center of interest over periods that are commonly 5
to 10 years long, and I focus on the center of the target during this period,
until I have found what I was searching for, and until I have reached the
limits of what I was able to do in this field.
Of course, some of these period may overlap ,and I do not decide that I will
do trading from 010190 to 123199, then convert myself to a belcanto singer for
the next 10 years.
This state of mind has also drawbacks , and I'm sure that I have missed some
intersesting points during my life, but I any case, I was never disappointed
by the work being done, regardles of the results, because I have the good
habit to forget (as far as possible) the bad results ,and only keep in mind
the good ones, even if the are not so numerous.
When feel for sure that I have reached the limits that I define as no
progress obtained during months, the interest begin to vanish, and I turn
again to a new center of interest.
This may also explain why I have spent so much time on Omega software (means
all of my available time for years).
Now, concerning external influences, obviously, physics were a major one.
During my college years, at this time I was in a boarding school, I have spent
most of my time in the physic labs instead of the study room devoted to this
task.
I got a special permission from my teachers, and they allowed me to read all
the books on chemistry available (was my first choice), let me to help to
prepare experiences, and I became close friend of the people helping to
prepare the materials for the students.
I have been able to read all the available books they had and got a serious
knowledge on what will become my main work some years later.
When I was 16 years old, I was following the chemistry course without any
paper or pencil, and was somewhat amazed whe some teachers were asking to me
to solve some exercises in physics for them during my laboratory time
presence.
An other positive influence was a kind of permanent challenge between the
boarding school members.
In the evening I was there with them and we have spent our years to solve
problems (first for progressing, but also to compete: The winner was who found
the simplest and quickest solution).
In fact ,I'm an autodidact before anything, and technical analysis was a good
field of experience for me (but 20 years later).
Speaking of this, I learned ( later) by myself a technique know as graphology
during 5 years.
It's not a science, only a technique, and it became for me an opening mind
mean to others people.
Psychlogy is not taught duringt he college years, and it's a serious lack to
understand people when you know nothing to the human behaviour, excepted by
your own experience.
This could be seen as not related to the technical analysis stuff, but in fact
it's very close:
Graphology is based on observation of hand writing and the precise
classification of what you may observe.
I'm sure that I have been helped by this training when observing handwriting
curves and seeing later the indicators produced by programming.
It was an invaluable training for me, as I have always developpend any trading
system by eyeballing the underlying components (indicators).
Now, graphology must be taken for what it is: An objective method, but the
results are approximative.
I cannot describe the full personality of an human being, but gives some
general directions that are not perfectly random.
Unless we can know all the equations and rule that governs any human behaviour
(a joke!), such techniques are better than nothing to get an objective picture
of the considered personality.
The picture may be not sharp, but it's better than nothing, and when properly
done, the resul that you can really see is the start point of the truth.
No risk with E-Mail. I cannot discover anything from you.
Markets are not governed by so precise laws than physics.
If they exist, they remain unknown and unapplicable.
Things are changing according to external conditions, as could do any human
being.
Most of the scientific people do not believe in technical analysis because
they only accept general laws etched in stone.
Same people do not believe in graphology for the same reason.
They could be right if the goal was to explain the markets and to explain
human behaviour, as surely they can do with planetary movements or
electromagnetic fiels propagation.
This is where they fail because the target is not the same:
When performing technical analysis, we try to deduct the trend slope in order
to make money.
Of course, we fail most of the time (usually more than 50% of the trades), but
the general result is a positive slope equity curve (I assume that we have a
winning trading system).
We do not to attempt to explain why the trend is up or down.
In this sense, graphology acts in the same low pretention field:
We do not want to know all, but only a workable probability of what will be
the reaction of a given unknown individual when faced to a given situation,
only by observing the unconscient projection of its own personality projected
in his/her handwriting
That's all, that's simple and workable until you remain in the domain of
general considerations.
Thse techniques are widely used in France to recruiting people, in what I
perfectly disagree, because it's not objective enough, and also for ethical
considerations.
Even if it was enough , its a stupid method close to eugenism, an
evolutionnary nonsense.
But that's an other story...
For ending, it's obvious to me that I have been influenced by my own students.
Spending years to try to teach how to understand problems and solve them to
people that were not always receptive and observing their trial and errors is
certainly more valuable than anything to train yourself on difficults problem
to solve for like technical analysis could be.
When doing technical analysis, I frequently was in the same situation than my
students that were not understanding a problem that I proposed to them.
If I could feel comfortable when I was the originator of the problem posted (I
knew the solution,or that the solution was existing), this was not the case
when the market was posting the problem to me.
I cannot develop more, but I feel that I have learn a lot from the bad tracks
followed by my students that were fooled by some difficult problems (difficult
for them because they were searching the entry point of the solution).
I fact, in the way how they established bad tracks that were initial good
track for them!
Solving a problem in physics usually starts from a sketch where you put as
clearly as possible the knwoledge (hypothesis) of the problem, before starting
to write any equation (any code).
Then you start to find the entry point.
As I have reviewed dozens of thousands of tentatives to solve problems by my
students over years, I'm sure that I have got a valuable knowledge on how
human thinking may fail before success.
This has saved a lot of time to me when trying to solve for market problems.
I'ma also grateful to Bill Brower and the TS Express journal where he used to
post very intelligent programming problems in most of the issues of the
journal, that I highly recommand.
I must confess that I have often learned by trying to solve them by finding
the simplest solution ( this is the rule of the game), and that sometimes a 2
line of vicious concentrated code took several hours to discover it in some
cases, only to be able to remove 10% of the length of the code.
For ending, I know what are my limits.
If it has not always been the case in the past, but the experience has shown
them later.
So, knowing yourself is maybe the most important thing, and the hardest part.
Could be frustrating, but becoming a pragmatic is the best remedy to any
oversized ego tendancy.
I'm not a true neurofuzzy logic specialist, and not a GA specialist too.
But I use to work with people that know better what I do not in these fields.
Better than me and to a level that will never reach (I'll not try , anyway).
I also use to learn from some people that are better than me in a field where
me may have common interests.
I have no complex on this point.
Having an opening mind is maybe the best thing that I know.
I believe in nothing, excepted what can be proved. This is not in
contradingction with all of above, but it's my road map.
I do not know if all of this could be useful to anyone.
But as the question has been posted here...
Sincerely,
Pierre Orphelin
www.sirtrade.com
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