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In way of intro: I'm a Drummond neophyte. Just finished all the lessons
over Christmas and have been paper trading bonds, beans, wheat, Canadian
Dollar and Eurodollar. Was a stock broker and option trader. Long time
software engineer, coding EL for a few years. I've written and tested many
systems, my own and from books and purchased. Not a professional trader.
Yet.
Futures Magazine has a nice article about discretionary trading this month
and the first part hits the nail on the head: Discretionary trading is
great if you can manage your emotions. I've coded and tested hundreds of
systems simple and complex. I've got systems using Steidlmayer and Overlays
that are twenty pages long and take 4 hours to run. And guess what, the
best signal processor by far is my brain! Just try coding a simple triangle
pattern when your eye can pick one out in a fraction of a second and your
code still misses it because of ONE bit of noise. I suggest Mark Douglas'
brilliant, comprehensive and eye-opening book, "The Disciplined Trader" for
system or discretionary traders. Anyone that believes the line, "Use system
trading and remove the emotional difficulties of trading..." is either new
in town or is simply waiting for their first system drawdown :)
Nevertheless, trading without a METHOD, coded or otherwise is like taking
on a double diamond in your first skiing lesson! Drummond Geometry is a
method. And, if you are diligent, love a challenge and are a good coder,
you can even program those methods into systems. Do you have to? No. The
point is making money. Not making software systems.
You're exactly right, it is very expensive! But to cover the same material
in the same depth in a seminar or classroom setting would easily take two
very packed and rushed weeks, forty hours a week with lots of homework.
Where I can get two weeks of intensive, detailed and lucrative training for
less than four grand? Maybe one of those ads, "How to have an Exciting
Career as a Travel Agent from your Own Home!" Yeah. I'm a reasonably
intelligent guy and a hard worker. I guess I spent over 200 hours on the 30
lessons. And, I'm reviewing them now and can continue to do so for the next
several years if I want. That's about $20 an hour and dropping fast. I wish
I could get a Swedish massage that cheap!
Up to about lesson 25, I had the same question you did, "When am I going to
learn how to trade this?" Can you just learn lessons 25-30 and trade? I
doubt it. Why? What's one of the hardest things about trading? CONFIDENCE!
Anyone that thinks they can read one book and make money in the markets is
a true friend of Traders Press and Barnes and Noble. By the time I got to
lesson 30, I was so damned stuffed with Drummond Geometry examples I would
have to be the village idiot's butler not to have confidence in the stuff.
Okay, maybe Ted Hearne is an overachiever. Maybe he's a sadist. Maybe he
loves creating thousands of examples and screens and it's his road to the
Pearly Gates. Doesn't matter to me. All I know is that, I HAVE BEEN
COMPLETELY TRAINED. Larry Williams is my other hero and I've read every one
of his books several times and it never came close to my virtual PhD in
Drummond Geometry. If it were easy, 85% of all traders would not be losers
:)
So, what's wrong with the course? An index or even just a detailed table of
contents would be a godsend. An overview of all the major Drummond elements
and how they fit would be grand. I love the trees but I don't want to wait
to the final lessons to find out whether I'm in southern Germany's Black
Forest or California's redwoods. Reviewing the lessons a second time while
paper trading I realize, "Oh wow. This is not that complicated. It's a big
country but there are only a few provinces in it." Money management
techniques are covered but very simply. You won't find detailed statistical
regression analysis of MFE vs drawdown values. Thank goodness. If you want
that, I suggest Rina Software's two grand software and two grand weekend
seminar. (Gee. There's a four grand deal just for money management :)
All you system jockeys, forget about popping the indicators in a system.
The code is locked, for good reason. But, if you understand the methods,
you can certainly write up your own systems and patterns. You can even do
that from the latest Pruitt and Hill book that contains a chapter on
Drummond. I found it easy enough and I'm no whiz kid. Be forewarned though,
using just that one chapter it will be like driving a car with only a first
gear. You'll get there but the high pitched whine and 10mph max speed will
drive you to seizures and tears.
Forget about just using the books from Drummond directly. Ted Hearne's
never withering laurels rest on the fact that he took thousands of pages of
chart scribbled notes, difficult to read photocopies of stochastically
formatted text and composed that mind boggling Shoenberg-like masterpiece
into Wagnerian clarity. Long? True. Comprehensive, coherent and melodic?
You bet.
Well, sorry for the long post! If anyone has any other questions that a
beginner can answer, let me know. If you are looking for an easy way to
make money in the markets, good luck! I'll tell you what, I'll sell you a
dozen for half the price and you can lose four times that amount trading it
:-0)
Happy trading!
Would welcome criticisms, disagreements, rebuttals, especially from
Drummond traders, of the following impressions upon visiting the Drummond
Geometry
website (www.Tedtick.com):
Author Ted Hearne claims that Drummond is a reclusive, brilliant,
Canadian trader, "partially retired" in Nova Scotia, whom author Hearne
claims
took "nine figures out of the markets".
1) Looks like another "discretionary system", with all the problems
that implies: It will boil down to your ability to subjectively apply
rules
stated in "lessons", that in total, cost $3475. Will you be able to get
through 30 lessons, (each block of five will cost $695) and have
something
concrete you can trade with at the end of the tunnel?
2) Looks like author Ted Hearne is the "popularizer" of Drummond's
methods, in these lessons; you will end up getting Drummond second hand
via
Hearne.
3) A sample of the writing style, in the first lesson, indicates long
winded explanations that are hard to operationalize. I kept asking
myself:
"When is the author going to get the point and tell me how to trade with
this?" Lot's of talk about "energy flow", etc. ("Deep Learning" Hypnosis
Tapes are available for an additional $45). Been there; heard that. In
fact, in a review cited by John Hill of Future's Truth, Hill states: "It
[the
30 lesson course] is not inexpensive and unless one is willing to devote
many hours to studying the material, you may not get value." Even if you
do
study intensely, and "get value", will you be able to trade successfully
with it?
4) Drummond Geometry indicators for Trade Station are available at still
additional cost ($605), so we are up to about $4080 with no Easy Language
system code.
5) No evidence by author Hearne that Drummond's methods can be concisely
written and tested via Easy Language on various markets and time frames.
A bare bones "track record" is reported, but it is clear it was obtained
via subjective rule application (by John Hill? by author Hearne?). I think
you would end up pulling your hair out trying to write testable code in all
the "multiple time-frame" charts that the Drummond method employs.
6) Even if Drummond's entry rules result in decent entries, the method
in total will end up being only as good as the stops and money management
that go with it. One would need EL system code to optimize stops on
today's
markets and timeframes of your choice, and that is not available.
7) There is a bright spot, and potential value for the dollar: Drummond
himself published several books, each of which will cost $170. For
example:
"How to make money in the futures market - and lot's of it", 1978,
Drummond Publications, looks intriguing. (Unfortunately, the publisher is
not a
standard one such as John Wiley, McGraw-Hill, etc., so you probably
cannot order it from Amazon.com at a lower cost.) However, this book could
be a
good source of ideas for indicator and system testing in Easy Language.
Peter
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