Better to be Wide or Deep?

Trading is full of contradictions, you should go with what suits your personality whether wide or deep IE there is no correct answer eg famed trader Richard Dennis had KISS as one of his 4 guiding principles and Soros made trading decisions based on how his back felt.


Agreed. I'm not saying that you need to be super quantitative to be make money in the market. I'm just responding to the tweet with the blanket statement that anything higher than algebra will make you lose all of your money.
 
you are not talking about performance greatness and how to achieve it,

That's the Million dollar mystery Holy Grail question that's ever so elusive, or not.
It can be right in front of your eyes, and most people will think nothing of it. -- But don't expect anybody to actually literally write it down on some cook book, if you're even lucky enough to find one of those really rare people.

Performance greatness isn't some mystery in the market...it's just a relatively simple matter of pushing things to the limit, the willingness to take risks. -- along with the necessary and vital ...skill and wisdom and strategy and tactics and mindset to pull it off.

Even for someone like Handle123, who is some apparently walking market textbook encyclopedia veteran genius with 20,000 hours under his belt and cowboy boots...he only pulls in five figures, when his trading acct is supposedly seven figures large.
If you're conservative, and that's you...that's fine. -- But all big swinging dicks should be pulling in six figures.
I was able to generate five figures with my four figure trading account.
2018 ET. o_O
 
Last edited:
Trading is full of contradictions, you should go with what suits your personality whether wide or deep IE there is no correct answer eg famed trader Richard Dennis had KISS as one of his 4 guiding principles and Soros made trading decisions based on how his back felt.
with his proclivity to interfere in the political affairs of foreign countries, it amazes that he has not landed flat on his back.
 
Last edited:
with his proclivity to interfere in the affairs of foreign countries, it amazes that he has not landed flat on his back.
...?.. Is that in reference to Soros shorting the pound ? Or other big FX trades ? If so, that is not interfereing with anyone's affairs, it is trading in the free markets. If not, Ignore my response.
 
I broadly agree with you up to a certain limit. If you are specialist you will get paid big bucks up to a limit. A specialist who master a highly technical topic can get paid a lot more than a generalist at the lower levels.

But you must realize the highest paid people in Corporate America are NOT specialists, but generalist(CEOs and senior management). Even the very best engineers at Google gets paid less than VPs at Google for example. It's not that a CEOs know 10x more than the most technical engineers but a CEO easily make 100x+ times more.

Just sayin'
I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding the core ideas behind the quote. But I know that you have said some stuff that reveal you want to be a Jack. So I think this post is more about justifying your viewpoints then is it at being correct. So I'll just leave it at that.
 
This makes complete sense to me.

(In principle, we look at people with math/physics degrees, sometimes people with other really academically rigorous subjects - whether sciences/arts - but almost never at anyone with business/MBA/finance qualifications. I know we're far from alone.)

Interesting. So you work at quant fund? That's pretty cool.

I read somewhere(maybe II?) that the joke is that Rentech has the best math & physics dept in America. haha.

No, I never worked at Rentech.
 
Last edited:
I don't use "technical scanners", but I share your perceptions on this subject, really. The more "specialist"/"rare" your specific pattern is, the more it makes sense to be able to look at other instruments, too, because otherwise you'll just be sitting on your hands all day (or, in my case, just playing backgammon online)?

I have a small range of "patterns", some of which are very similar to each other, anyway. I look at CL when I can't trade NQ, and at E6/B6 when I can't trade CL either. (I probably ought to look at more instruments, too - and it certainly makes much more sense for me to do that than to look for additional "patterns"/"trading-styles".)


Again, I broadly agree with you.

I do see your points and agreed with them as well. I think what I'm trying to get at is if you found a consistent pattern then it can be thought of as a signal in your system. And you can use technical scanner to locate that pattern across a broad universe of instruments and enter them appropriately. With proper risk management and portfolio weighting then you should be fine.

Better yet if you have a group of uncorrelated signals then you can generate consistent returns in theory.

If you trade one instrument then you have to wait until your particular pattern shows up that day(which it might or might not). So then you have to use a collection of patterns at your disposal if you are only going to trade one instrument.

At this point, this discussion is largely academic. My account is sufficiently small where it's still quite good to focus on index futures and make a good money relative to the account size.

I guess if and when the account get big enough that I need a collection of uncorrelated signals then I'll worry it then..haha

I'm NOT there yet. @Xela , you are a much much better trader than me..
 
Last edited:
it is like black box trading. you need to tweak your algorithm to stay ahead.

You been playing the game long time, do you tweak manual trading if you still trading that way?

...
However, if given the right info and training from the start I suspect anyone can be making 100% annual profits in 1-2 years. Trading is simple. Just counter-intuitive. I have already shut down the R&D process. There is not much more to learn about trading that you can't learn in the first 1-2 years.

I so disagree with your statements, otherwise I just threw away last several years of my life, I think not. There is always something you not done before, think about...What would happen if whatever you are doing just stopped working due to exchanges saying you can't do what you are doing? Or, IRS changes tax laws of how you are trading the taxes triple?

Of course if you are nailing 80% plus of your trades, I might be able to agree it best for you to stop learning. But in my case, I going to keep working to get as close to zero risk as possible in longer term timeframes, anything over fifteen minute bars. But day trading not cost effective to hedge even though risk is generally huge.
Even for someone like Handle123, who is some apparently walking market textbook encyclopedia veteran genius with 20,000 hours under his belt and cowboy boots...he only pulls in five figures, when his trading acct is supposedly seven figures large.
If you're conservative, and that's you...that's fine. -- But all big swinging dicks should be pulling in six figures.
I was able to generate five figures with my four figure trading account.
2018 ET. o_O

What you only read small pieces of my posts? LOL, have much more hours than 20k-this is only in risk management. No cowboy boots for me, never liked the pointy toes, actually wear diabetic shoes, more room for toes to dance, had to get automation to trade for me as in early stages of glaucoma, just trying to enjoy life before darkness sets in.

So you had $9,999 and made a buck to get to five figures, impressive.
 
Last edited:
...?.. Is that in reference to Soros shorting the pound ? Or other big FX trades ? If so, that is not interfereing with anyone's affairs, it is trading in the free markets. If not, Ignore my response.


Soros has been a big financial contributor to the anti-Brexit campaign in the UK, to the tune of at least £400,000, following the Brexit referendum result. Which is all a bit troubling, regardless of whether you support Brexit or not, as he's not even a British citizen.
 
Back
Top