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Mark Brown wrote:
> try adding commissions and slippage and roll over cost to the trades,
> combined with the fact that human error on the brokers part is seldom in
> ones favor. i have nothing against mark personally and i just think that if
> he did what he said he was very lucky. mb
>> SNIP <<
Mark Johnson wrote:
> In the 2.5 years from 1/1/1997 to 5/13/1999, I have
>made $+421,000 in net profits using this system,
>*including commissions, slippage, rollovers,
>human blunders, etc.* [emphasis added]
I understand this to mean that the results reported were net of all this.
I bet he figures the harder he works the luckier he gets.
The value of having done all that testing must be the confidence it gives you
when all your trades are doing lousy, and your mailbox is stuffed with lucrative
come-ons from other gurus going on and on about how rich they and all their
customers are getting, and here you are stuck with this dog of a system that has
lost 25% from its peak.
Some years back, I bought one of the high priced much bally-hooed computerized
systems, along with Super Charts, slapped them both on a brand new computer, put
a very substantial sum of money in a newly opened brokerage account with a
recommended broker and sat back to wait for the wealth to start rolling in. And
it kind of did. We were short the Yen, but the pound kept giving it back, etc.,
and there were some decent bond trades, but I got impatient, and started looking
at alternatives. A very well known guru came to my attention, and I began
studying this man's ideas. One fine day, with the S&P's at about 603, the
expensive mechanical system said "BUY", but the guru's main method said this was
the top of the grand supercycle, so "sell". Well, that trade would have made
about $30,000 a car over the next few months, while I was sitting there, like
Ben Franklin's observation about a man with 2 watches never being sure what time
it is! I had taken every prior trade without fail or second guessing up until
then.
Mark Johnson first picked out some promising alternatives, tested them every
which way, then started trading, and apparently had the patience and confidence
to stick it out. I know how hard it is to sit there day after day, seeing your
positions turn to smelly brown stuff, downloading and running your system, then
being down another couple hundred or so, for month after endless month, before
finally catching the yen, or coffee or the S&P in a big run. This looks like
the easiest money in the world, but it isn't-- very few can do it, actually.
Anyway, what is your trading secret, Mr. Brown? How do you trade if mechanical
sytems are "gambling"?
Jim Allen
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