Recent content by Ash1972

Modern trend following funds (aka CTA funds) diversify risk across multiple sub systems and markets. Filtration methods are used to select the lowest risk combination of trades from a large pool of potential trades. This helps to minimise the effect of chop. Of course, this can never be...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11123162/Return-of-the-daytrader-can-you-earn-a-living-by-copying-other-investors.html I don't know whether to laugh or cry.. or just keep watching South Park.

Yes I meant until the recent period of high volatility started in the last several weeks. I'm talking about the declining vol from 2009 onwards. Right now we have huge amounts of it in most markets APART FROM equity indices, which are at all time highs. Hence my comparison to 2007, when vol...

Most of 2014 up until the last few weeks has resembled 2007 in terms of an overvalued, overly complacent stock market and very low vol across almost all asset classes. Curious to hear your views as to what comes next.

It's always different this time.

Yes, bulls buying every dip and bears getting squeezed is the hallmark of a bull market, but in the early stages (2009) bears dominate for longer and the dips are bigger and scarier. Every bull market ends when the bears have given up shorting..

+1. No matter what the Fed does the market has never been, and never will be, a perpetual motion machine.

The Fed is neither here nor there. I would say: don't fight the market! :) The Fed was cutting aggressively from 2001 but the market still kept falling.

And cheap money means what for the stock market? DID YOU KNOW that when one person buys shares and puts his money into the market someone else sells to him and takes his money out? Regardless of whether the money was cheap or expensive in the first place :) It is difficult to scare people...

The "option writers" and "pros" are the exact same group of people.

Exactly. It's funny how often people forget that every buy has a matching sell and then come up with all kinds of silly explanations for what's going to happen. My favourite: the market can only go up because there is so much "cash on the sidelines". Whoever invented that phrase should be...

VN has many, many admirable qualities EXCEPT the 2 most important: humility and the ability to manage risk.

Just to clarify: "helmholtz" is the new handle for marketsurfer, correct?

Love that "2008: ? probably beat the market" :) Probably had ~100% withdrawals.