Search results

I have just finished skimming Stephen Wolfram's book a New Science. He would say that even if the markets are not random and follow some simple rule. It is still not possible to predict them because, that would mean that you had a way to do the computation that the market does, faster...

It occurs to me that a lot of the discussion on this thread is coming from a definition of randomness. I f I say the chance of the next event occuring is 90% and 10% of not happening that to me is random. On the other hand, if by random you mean the chance of any particular event is...

Predict what the the market will be up? Lets say you get the direction right 75% of the time. But you only make 20 points. but when you get it wrong you lose 80 points. You are on a hiding to nothing. You need to predict direction as well as size of move.

Obviously 1. Not sure why the probabilities in a coin toss reset? They are always 1/2 surely (ignoring the coin landing on its edge of course). I belive you may be able to predict a single humans behavior, but I am doubtful of being able to predict the interaction of a large number of...

:D That made me smile thanks

Think of a card counter in BlackJack its random but the counter still has an edge think of the count as an indicator. I am fully prepared to belive that you notice something that allows you to trade so it feels non-random. Randomness is a difficult concept, think of the decimal expansion of...

Quite possibly you have an edge. A top ball player knows nothing of newtonian mechanics and wind speeds etc etc but can still catch a ball. For me the point is that the markets are Random does not mean you can't make money from them.

Quite right you need to have the edge first, and then use position sizing etc to ensure that you don't go bankrupt waiting for the edge to work. Interestingly if you have a real edge, you should be able to take an enormous amount of money out of the market

Notice he says predicting the future is not rational. A particular , buyer or seller may be rational, but on aggregate the markets are way to volatile for me to belive that everybody knows all the relevant information and further what the impact of that information will be, and hence make then...

Could not agree more, also you need to look at all the possible paths. What I mean is just because you made money on a trade does not mean that you did the right thing. By the same token because you lost money doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. The hard thing is accepting the randomness...

Its a measure of the relationship of the returns not the prices themselves try working out the correlation of the prices and it will be 90%

IMHO you are almost certainly right about the non-commutative algebra part. The beauty of those geometry's is that they imply an uncertain relationship al la Heisenberg, so probability enters as a function of the geometry not an ad hoc enforced assumption. But as you say the mathematics is...

What a story and I can't raise 1mm :confused: :mad:

Exactly and a lot of OTC derivatives are nonsense trades to get around tax or some other regulation, just convenient to call them derivatives and it makes the structuring bank look clever. I question how many credit derivatives are real in the sense that they payoff in the event of a default.

I have noticed that all the clever posts come from people registered before 2002. :D

No thats not what I am saying it was in reply to post about perhaps he's a better broker than trader. But you never know maybe thats what he's doing

I know of one broker that trades a hedge fund through himself rather than another cheaper broker. Weird but he refuses to admit that what he is doing is fraud.

Especially when a few days before it was trading at about $85 billion.? If you ask me the volatility is just to great for all the information to be in the price.

Amen to that, I sometimes think the worst thing that can happen to a trader is to make money from the start, better to struggle and have a few black swans. Nothing like the gut wrenching, and weird arguments you create when your losses are mounting above anything you thought possible. At the...

Fees which are paid monthly or quartely why do you think they push the prices at month end quarter end. They get a % of assets under management. a tiny increase in this fee adds up over years. They are not paid for performance.