|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
[Quoth the Edwin J DeGuzman:]
>
> Robbins Trading Group has held a trading contest every year for the past
> 16 years. The entrance fee is $1000, which seems rather steep. It runs
> from Jan 1 to Dec 31, and the top prize goes to the account with the
> highest percentage returns, obviously.
>
> It seems to be a marketing ploy designed to drum up business, so I am
> immediately suspicious of their motives. However, it is in their best
> interests to run a fair and impartial contest. Has anyone heard positive
> or negative experiences about contestants? What about people who have
> won in the past? Or who have made a good showing?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ed
As I have pointed out in the past in other forums, and as Nassim Taleb
points out somewhere on his web page, the kind of trading system you use
to win contests and the kind of trading system you use to manage money
are as different as night and day. The absolute worst thing you can do
with money, aside from paying taxes, is give it to someone who has just
won a trading contest to manage the same way he won the contest :-).
Alexander Elder has a section on contests in "Trading for a Living"; his
view is perhaps even more negative than mine. I will say one good thing
about *some* contests. *Some* of them are farily accurate simulations of
real trading, more so than one typically gets when backtesting a system
with, say, Tradestation. I don't know enough details to know whose are
the most accurate; it's not really relevant because if you have a
marketable trading system, you're not likely to win the contest and
you're simply throwing your entry fee away.
--
znmeb@xxxxxxxxxxxx (M. Edward Borasky) http://www.teleport.com/~znmeb
If God had meant carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits
fire.
|