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>"even turkeys fly in a hurricane."
http://www.managedfutures.com/10Year.html
Looks like some "turkeys" are still flying high....
after about thirty years.
BW
>From: "John Hamon" <jhamon@xxxxxxxx>
>To: "Omega_List" <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: trading systems
>Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 06:43:20 -0700
>
>i read this list to keep current with tradestation, the trading platform i
>love to hate. but when it veers off into "philosophy" about trading
>systems
>i always find myself amazed at what passes for thought and enlightenment.
>i
>write this to the list for no other purpose than to help somebody else who
>might perhaps be able to hear it and benefit. i have been through all of
>this myself, i have heard and done it all too, so understand i am trying
>to
>help. and i don't want $5,000 or even $300 to do so...
>
>some silly person wrote the other day that even discretionary traders use
>systems and the difference between discretionary trading and systems
>trading
>is just a matter of the complexity of the decision tree. how could you not
>say this without realizing what you are saying? it's like comparing a
>traffic light and traffic cop. the traffic light (a trading system) can
>have some internal logic and use sensors to determine whether there is
>excess traffic on one side of the signal, but it cannot take the place of a
>traffic cop (discretion). when the big game is at the stadium (an
>exceptional situation), they turn off the traffic lights around the stadium
>and bring in the cops. it's obvious why, so i'll simply complete the
>analogy. systems fail under exceptional conditions (and lots of others).
>and when they do, they fail spectacularly. i read all this nonesense about
>how successful traders use systems. if you cling to the belief that
>richard
>dennis is a successful trader, then you don't understand the old adage that
>"even turkeys fly in a hurricane." richard dennis made his nut in the last
>commodities inflation cycle. how's he done since then?
>
>more recently, how about all the "dippies" who bought the dips of CSCO all
>the way down to 15? for ten years buying the dips made you look like a
>genius. now, with a greater than 80% haircut, if you've been buying the
>dips you've been getting margin calls. i talked to a man last night whose
>professional financial advisor put his retirement into professionally-run
>mutual funds that have returned him -55% in the last 12 months. these are
>professionals?
>
>then i read this "philosophy" about self-confidence and belief and all the
>rest of the tony robbins horseshit. this is an off-shoot of the
>self-esteem
>movement, whose results include american high schoolers who feel good about
>their math abilities and have among the lowest test scores in the developed
>world. no amount of self-esteem will replace knowledge and understanding
>of
>the markets.
>
>this is true: markets do exhibit quantifiable pricetime signatures that
>reflect where they are in their growth curves. as i wrote once before
>recently, the game is about knowing what time it is. is it the beginning,
>continuation or end of the trend? or is "no trend" time (random walk)?
>what is the pricetime magnitude of the trend? to learn this, however, you
>will have to discard larry williams, tom demark, jake bernstein and all the
>rest of them. and start thinking. for starters think about whether i am
>right or not: are there any circumstances under which these guys would be
>selling books, videos and hotlines if they knew what time it was in the
>market? why would you: a) go through the enormous hassles they do when you
>could be completely self-directed every day of your life? these guys sell
>the dream, but they don't live it; b) sell the information you use to make
>money for a few hundreds of dollars? answer: they don't have anything!
>
>a good example is this larry williams "trading pattern" that was discussed
>the other day. what larry williams calls a trading pattern might, at best,
>be considered an entry trigger, if you already knew that you wanted to be
>long the market. the fact that he stops it out on the first profitable
>open
>demonstrates why he is, after all these years, an unsuccessful trader: he
>won't let the trade work.
>
>here it is in a nutshell: if you believe that optimized neuro-fuzzy
>networks
>of ADX, RSI and stochastics are going to lead you to the promised land,
>then
>you'll continue to give your money to me. throw out all the derivative
>indicators and spend a couple of years looking at price, time and volume
>(OI
>in futures). look at great stuff and look what it did to start, continue
>and end trends. you'll be on the right track.
>
>jh
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