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And by the way, I'm nobody's acolyte. Just someone who knows and respects Dr Niederhoffer and feels he should be defended against the pack of animals that we've seen in action here. This is something that you and snakes like you would not understand.

Excuse me Mr Lizard, or should it be plain 'snake'? But what is pathetic is the continual sniping and petty viciousness that this thread seems all about. Attacking someone for the way they CHOOSE to name their kids is one of the most pathetic items in this already pathetic discussion.

He's not the pathetic one. Try either Francis Galton or John Galt ('Atlas Shrugged').

Incidentally, I have only one identity, and I'm sure the same goes for Bunny Pink, Market Surfer and others. It's interesting from a psychological perspective that a lot of posters here seem to have wanted to believe that we are one and the same person rather than something of a 'crowd'...

Just trying to help. Smile! :D

I believe there is a link here between your use of stops (dynamic/ fixed/ whatever) and your idea that past data has limited value for the future. Based on what you have said I hypothesise that your 'systems' contain too many independent variables (one of which will be your stops) and are thus...

Well I take my hat off to you, I have tested a lot of systems but haven't found one which worked better with a stop loss. Of course perhaps you are artificially optimising your stop losses in a curve-fitted kind of way, which might well work on past data. That would certainly explain why you...

IF you test any kind of system (which I figure you don't) you'd see that stop losses invariably limit performance. I don't see why you're taking it personally, it's just reality. And I wasn't discussing VN/naked puts etc, I was discussing your apparent insistence that stop losses are the only...

Really sounds like you'd be better off cutting your lost time with your trading efforts, getting a job and squirreling money away into an index tracker. It can be easily demonstrated that stop losses are an excellent way of randomising your results, and when you win a little and lose a little...

So you are saying that after a period of sharply declining prices one should exit longs? You're teasing, right? If not I suggest you try to quantify this idea to see if it's correct.

Precisely. Much better to get a job and dollar cost average into an index tracker.

Really this is excellent. Almost as good as me in fact...

I personally prefer a lower risk profile. But I don't believe there is a 'correct' answer on this.

Risk is all relative. What would any of us do faced with a 1987 style crash in which there are no bids? Stop losses don't even get filled in that kind of situation. The safest way to trade is totally unleveraged with money you can well afford to lose. But you don't get rich that way. The...

Actually we're more or less in agreement! Congratulations! Your last post confused me as you did seem to be backtracking. But now you have a serious problem with your pals...

OK, so why are you testing your trading ideas using stats, or any other method based around historical data. Why not tea leaves? You ARE going back on what you said before, and you know it.

Why are you going back on your previous excellent idea??? Is it because you realised that such an objective method of testing returns might alienate you from your cronies?

OK, we seem to be back with the Arseimedes line of reasoning of pursuing his 'arete' (excellence supposedly) but without any clearcut method of measuring it. Except of course by the agreement of a self-congratulating frog pond of losers.

The idea that you can't do it because nobody else does it is laughably typical of a sheep. I think it's a great idea by giggling cynic.

OK, a serious post deserves a serous answer. It seems you are testing stuff at least. First of all there are many complex issues here, not least of which is volatility and margin. This tends not to be a problem for small traders, but when you're a big fund it's totally different. Simply put...