Did Altucher fail as a trader?

[d08]

Quote from gmst:

Agree with most of what you say - just want to bring to your attention though that some funds might be trading with a multi-month hold periods. If trade hold period is in months, 72 trades is a very reasonable and respectable number to have in a backtest. E.g. consider going long when MA50 crosses MA200.

I haven't read Vishnu's book - so I might be off here. Have no idea of his strategies. My gut says - Vishnu didn't work as hard as we pikers do, because I have strategies which backtest for 8 yrs and have been consistently profitable for 2 yrs. Backtest had 400 trades or so, forward test 100 trades or so

Edit: Also consider if hypothetically a strategy tests for a date effect or something like that, over the last 10 yrs, you will get only 10*12 = 120 data points. So, Vishnu is correct in saying that depending on model, even 20 trades can be significant. What if you test only for Fed days - surely the whole population is limited - so your sample set can't be too big.

I see your points but as his trading was done on the daily scale, 72 trades is not significant.
I haven't traded on a monthly or weekly scale but he mentioned 20 trades being significant - I'd completely disagree about this. The question becomes, would you trade real money with confidence based on that? I certainly wouldn't.
I've done a lot of research regarding FED days and looked into dates in every form I could think of, I discovered something worthwhile and had at least 50 data points but never implemented it for the above mentioned reasons. When dealing with rare events, you need a large sample. You can curve fit and find the "perfect" market lows during crashes but it's still a curve fit.
The problem with his statement is that he cannot say his methods were valid, YET the edges stopped working after discovered. There is a fallacy here.
I've tested the strategies provided in the book as they're all publicly available, there was quite a lot of interest surrounding it when it came out but that quickly faded.

 

[Brass]

Quote from Vishnu:

...Can you make money in the long run using charts, TA, etc: No. Nobody has ever done, nobody ever will...

Interesting generalization. And sweeping. How about this guy:

http://www.amazon.com/Diary-Profess...1457/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332690318&sr=8-1

What do you think about him? Not a bad book, but I find his time frame too long for my taste, and his approach not sufficiently systematic for my own purposes. Also, he employs some elements of TA that I find meaningless from personal experience. For me, anything but the most rudimentary aspects of price action is essentially wishful thinking.

Admittedly, some of the people who endorsed his book make me cringe, including, but not limited to, Larry Williams.

Even so, he appears to have made money during the course of the diary, not to mention his lengthy trading career, and is evidently a noted trader with a presumably verifiable track record who relies on (his interpretation of) TA.

Any thoughts?

 

[AK100]

Quote from Vishnu:


Take my advice: use your intelligence to start a good business. Don't fall down the black hole of trading.

That's not saying it's impossible though. To me the statement suggests that trading is very hard (both to learn and to actually trade) so the odds are against success (but still possible).

The better and easier path (if you want to make a lot of money) is to go create a business, whatever that may be.

 

[patoo]

Quote from ssrrkk:

The consensus pendulum once again swings from "day trading possible" to "day trading not possible". There is no money in directional trading unless you are using "hidden but public" information. Stat arb is an old story, thoroughly exploited and averaged out to zero by now. All that's left is HFT. That's what all the hedge funds are doing. Seems like this is the story we hear over and over and over these days.

The question is: do hedge funds not look at certain things because they are not scalable? Or is it because there is really no statistical significance in all other methods.

However a trader profitable over the long haul is is final answer. I am not knocking anybody that day trades. I just can't do it in all markets..like right now.

What I am knocking is Mr. Profit of Doom. From my own prospective he is full of crap.

 

[4thaugust1932]

Just print up your own money.
Hell, Fed does it, why can't you? Just be damn good at it and don't get caught...

 

[traderchi128]

Quote from Vishnu:

I think you guys, for some reason, feel very threatened by my article, hence the need to insult me, try to justify your findings by lying about me, try to poke holes in my argument, etc. its like a psychological thing: many of you have made the life choice to be a trader and I am calling that life choice into question.

So like dogs backed into a corner you feel the need to respond. I get it. Good for you.

But if you read my article carefully you see I do identify at least six types of peoplewho make money in the markets:

The 5 I list plus one more category: using public info on microcaps as if it were private info.

Can you make money in the long run using charts, TA, etc: No. Nobody has ever done, nobody ever will. And with more computers in the game than ever, it will become even more impossible.

But I do think you can make money if you find what information is out there that has the characteristics of inside information but is, in fact, public. For instance, I was in a meeting the other day with a $100 million hedge fund that has computers scour FDA filings the second they appear and they have statistically built models to test how these filings will effect stocks.

That's what you are up against. I asked these guys if they would ever use charts: all the guys were from successful quant hedge funds. They laughed and said of course not.

I go and speak at all these trading seminars. I'm not selling books, tapes, newsletters. I go because its a vacation. I'm not raising money. I have no agenda. I am just trying to help people who are being robbed every day.

But I see al the other guys there: selling "trading systems" , newsletters, oscillators, etc. its all BS. The entire prop trading daytrading ecosystem is BS. I've spoken to thousands of traders. I've been a successful trader and an entrepreneur. I've done due diligence on probably a 1000 hedge funds.

Take my advice: use your intelligence to start a good business. Don't fall down the black hole of trading.

To sum everything up, Altucher was somewhat successful during the easy times of the late 90's early 2000's when anyone with a pulse rate could make money. Then things got tougher, he couldn't make money, so now he whines nobody can make money trading. He fits in perfect with the abundance of whiners on here who complain about not being able to adjust. Rather than accepting their failure they just claim that nobody can do it.

Well.....Jim....plenty of guys are out there doing great in the trading world. Yes...it's much tougher than the late 90's when all one had to do is type in any 4 letters and hit the buy button....but there are plenty of guys doing great out there trading.

As far as your comment about TA? That's hilarious ...really. Of course some quant guys who are not "traders" are going to rip on TA. Just like the TA guys who rip on the quant people because they have zero clue how trading really works.

But hey...they were a 100 million dollar hedge fund. In a world where anything under a Billion isn't considered large...well...that's laughable.

 

[Vishnu]

Read my blog. I wasn't late 90s and early 00s. In fact, that was my worst period of trading.

As far as the 100mm fund. They were a startup and it was their own personal money.

Again, i find everyone too eager to try and figure out ways to bash me. it won't work. Focus on what I say in the article.

Quote from traderchi128:

To sum everything up, Altucher was somewhat successful during the easy times of the late 90's early 2000's when anyone with a pulse rate could make money. Then things got tougher, he couldn't make money, so now he whines nobody can make money trading. He fits in perfect with the abundance of whiners on here who complain about not being able to adjust. Rather than accepting their failure they just claim that nobody can do it.

Well.....Jim....plenty of guys are out there doing great in the trading world. Yes...it's much tougher than the late 90's when all one had to do is type in any 4 letters and hit the buy button....but there are plenty of guys doing great out there trading.

As far as your comment about TA? That's hilarious ...really. Of course some quant guys who are not "traders" are going to rip on TA. Just like the TA guys who rip on the quant people because they have zero clue how trading really works.

But hey...they were a 100 million dollar hedge fund. In a world where anything under a Billion isn't considered large...well...that's laughable.

 

[Gueco]

Quote from Vishnu:

Read my blog. I wasn't late 90s and early 00s. In fact, that was my worst period of trading.

As far as the 100mm fund. They were a startup and it was their own personal money.

Again, i find everyone too eager to try and figure out ways to bash me. it won't work. Focus on what I say in the article.

where in the article do you say that someone using a simple swing trading system like the ones available in your books can be profitable ?

 

[traderchi128]

Quote from Vishnu:

Read my blog. I wasn't late 90s and early 00s. In fact, that was my worst period of trading.

As far as the 100mm fund. They were a startup and it was their own personal money.

Again, i find everyone too eager to try and figure out ways to bash me. it won't work. Focus on what I say in the article.

I did read your book about trading like a hedge fund yrs ago. I actually did like it. I thought there were some very good ideas in it. But this latest rant about no traders make money..TA is bs....NOTHING WORKS....well....it sounds like you are a whining failed trader. You obviously can't make money trading anymore so move on.

Your list of the only people who make money, while a good part of them do, it's just the same old bs I hear from people who are either losing money trading or have had their strategies go south and they don't want to adjust to new conditions.

I started trading in 1990....have heard the same nonsense for over 20 yrs. It's weak man. The same insiders,buy and hold,congressmen, and fund mgrs collecting fees were all there back then. Nothing new.

 

[patoo]

Quote from traderchi128:


I started trading in 1990....have heard the same nonsense for over 20 yrs. It's weak man. The same insiders,buy and hold,congressmen, and fund mgrs collecting fees were all there back then. Nothing new.

Exactly! And there are plenty of us that figured it out!