A message to some day traders.

[ElectricSavant]

Amahrix,

You have all the ingredients and revelations of a great all time trader. If you wrote a book I would buy it.

I have been a trader for many years...more years than I would like to admit. I find your posts to hit home. I may be at a turning point in my journey...but results are the only reality.

We shall see...

ES

 

[ElectricSavant]

one word...Gambling....

Did you know that when an aircraft falls from the sky, the safety of each aircraft after the accident INCREASES. (Because the survivors learn from the mistakes of the failures)

But this doesn’t translate to trading... when a day trader dies... a new one thinks he can do better... and dies too. Maybe he thought he knew better than the guy before but it keeps repeating.

Lesson: never compare social science to physical science especially the science of it. (There is no science in social realm).

But I get what you mean to say. ive been there... you know..... deceived as f*ck. It’s scary. Grateful I’m aware now. Truly.

When I tell them nicely they reject, so I yell, and they reject again. Perhaps, I’m wasting tremendous amount of time

 

[ElectricSavant]

So what do you do with this information? You end up with parameters representing the extremes of history...How does this extrapoliate to reality and the "NOW". You just end up with a bigger can to hold the data.

ES

Price movements are a reflection of human decisions to buy/to sell with profit as the objective.

Reflection does not mean perfect but it does not mean meaningless either.

Since the nature of the humans involved in buying/selling is selected and not random, and their objective remains constant, why should their actions be considered random?

 

[tomorton]

So what do you do with this information? You end up with parameters representing the extremes of history...How does this extrapoliate to reality and the "NOW". You just end up with a bigger can to hold the data.

ES

Data from the extremes of history allows traders to make more reliable conclusions concerning human behaviour using more recent more limited data. So I know that based on innumerable market incidents of behaviour through history that if I refer back to price data within the last 3 months only and draw certain conclusions, these will have a better than 50% probability of being correct. And that's enough of an edge to trade profitably.

 

[Amahrix]

Amahrix,

You have all the ingredients and revelations of a great all time trader. If you wrote a book I would buy it.

I have been a trader for many years...more years than I would like to admit. I find your posts to hit home. I may be at a turning point in my journey...but results are the only reality.

We shall see...

ES

Thanks, I appreciate your comment ES.

My unsolicited advice to you would be to

1) Purchase Incerto by Nassim Taleb and try to understand it to the best of your ability. Read them not once, but multiple times. I would do this tonight if I were you.

2) Read
3) Try to understand Ergodicity as popularized by Ole Peters

I’d follow both them on twitter if I were you.

All the best in your journey, much success, God willing friend.

 

[Amahrix]

Data from the extremes of history allows traders to make more reliable conclusions concerning human behaviour using more recent more limited data. So I know that based on innumerable market incidents of behaviour through history that if I refer back to price data within the last 3 months only and draw certain conclusions, these will have a better than 50% probability of being correct. And that's enough of an edge to trade profitably.

That’s why most day traders succeed and most are multimillionaires by now, including you, right? If this was the case, which it isn’t, the edges that you think you have, would’ve disappeared by now. What you’re saying is theoretically very very very simple stuff to understand yet it doesn’t work but are fooled to think it does.

Btw, did you know win rate, by itself, is also irrelevant. Yet most traders are so focused on win/loss rates, they forget about payoff functions. I can be correct less than 1% of the time and still end up profitable in my P&L. This is another topic. Just wanted to add tho.

 

[expiated]

I can be correct less than 1% of the time and still end up profitable in my P&L.

You are chock-full of theoretical "hypotheticals" that have no practical application in real-life day-to-day trading. Is all this stuff you are purporting based off what you have read in books?

 

[Amahrix]

You are chock-full of theoretical "hypotheticals" that have no practical application in real-life day-to-day trading.

False.

May I ask, why do you take your knowledge so seriously?
It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So - Mark Twain/Unknown

I'd like to also add that the difference between me and you is that I know that I don't know, but you believe you know that you know.

 

[tomorton]

That’s why most day traders succeed and most are multimillionaires by now, including you, right? If this was the case, which it isn’t, the edges that you think you have, would’ve disappeared by now. What you’re saying is theoretically very very very simple stuff to understand yet it doesn’t work but are fooled to think it does.

Btw, did you know win rate, by itself, is also irrelevant. Yet most traders are so focused on win/loss rates, they forget about payoff functions. I can be correct less than 1% of the time and still end up profitable in my P&L. This is another topic. Just wanted to add tho.

We all know the few important reasons why new traders don't succeed. As far as TA is concerned one of these is because they blindly and poorly apply TA to intra-day trading.

Which is not to say that TA doesn't work, even intra-day, its more to do with how it is applied.

 

[Amahrix]

We all know the few important reasons why new traders don't succeed. As far as TA is concerned one of these is because they blindly and poorly apply TA to intra-day trading.

Which is not to say that TA doesn't work, even intra-day, its more to do with how it is applied.

Keep telling yourself that.

Your model: Assuming T/A is correct and human error is what causes the losses, not the T/A.

Wittgenstein's ruler: TA/Bullsh*t peddlers use the ruler to measure the table; real/honest people(and real/honest scientists) use the table to measure the ruler.