Did Altucher fail as a trader?

[cornix]

Quote from Grandluxe:

Dude, there will always be making money no matter the circumstance, but not everyone is trading like you think with "2B" trendlines, backdoor entry, inside bars, breakout bars or whatever you call it.

We are playing the same game but on a different field.

A lot of the trades that we make based on knowledge of various execution algorithms, the interaction between different levels of the L2 book and correlation amongst the various execution venues are now gone. Deciphering the information leakage from these microstructures are not possible anymore due to the liquidity collapse. If altucher is intimately associated as he claims with hedge funds and prop firms, he will at least have an inkling of what I am talking about. This is not stuff you read about when you pick up that book from Amazon.com. Don't get me wrong, I am not dissing you, its great that you are making money but the point that Altucher is making is a very salient one.

Sure, I perfectly understand what you are talking about and know people who were successful in scalping FI using DOM and other quant ways to trade, but had to abandon their fields, because their edge was much eroded by some changes.

But then James should have stated in his article, that he talks about only quantitative strategies applicable for HF's etc.

I know that the way I trade is not "serious" enough for HF world, because it's not scalable enough and because it's parameters can't be quantified enough to suit the risk mgmt requirements, but when someone says "impossible", IMO it better be emphasized, what exactly is impossible.

Otherwise it may be deceptive information for his readers, rather than useful. Because certainly many ways to trade are not just alive, but are easier than ever to use.

 

[SteveH]

I guess the main question I would have for James about the markets would be this:

James, in your early 30's you had 15 million net. Why didn't you do the brain dead thing and buy 10 year T-Notes and continue to re-buy them on callbacks? Even at today's horrible rates that's 300K per year. The 10 year average would have been well over that.

You know, Ted Turner had a wonderful quote about his market experiences. He held that Time Warner multi-billion dollar fortune all the way down because he had recommended it to so many close friends and it became a major point of integrity conflict for him to sell out sooner.

He said that that one decision took him out of wheeler / dealer games for life because you need billions to play in that field. But, he said having the presence of mind to have 700 million in reserve in T-Bills kept his lifestyle intact.

[The question was somewhat rhetorical having read a little of your blog. T-Notes taste too much like wine. You wanted more vanilla milkshakes!]

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from cornixforex:

what about Vic Sperandeo? According to the statement above, he simply lied in his books about how he traded?

Past tense... Those books were from the early/mid 1990s. Nowadays he hawks a commodity index.

 

[cornix]

Quote from Rodney King:

Past tense... Those books were from the early/mid 1990s. Nowadays he hawks a commodity index.

Yet his stuff works just as great even intraday, not even speaking of daily/weekly time scale... Sorry, I meant to say, that's impossible of course.

 

[Rodney King]

So then why is he spending his time hawking a commodity index?

 

[cornix]

Quote from Rodney King:

So then why is he spending his time hawking a commodity index?

No idea. It's hard to guess one's reasons for doing this or that... But simple look at charts, especially bigger charts like daily/weekly shows that in huge volatility of 2000's (compared to early 90's) those patterns surely have an edge if traded in a way he recommended.

He mentioned dropping day trading due to high blood pressure in one of his books, probably over time even slower trading still had negative effect on his health.

Let's be honest, we mostly trade not because we love it, but to make money. And if we could make as much without risk, we surely would (well, at least I sure would never trade if was born an English prince instead of being a simple guy from Siberian shithole, lol), excluding some adrenaline/gambling addicts, most of whom never make it, by the way or swing from huge profits to epic blow ups (Livermore style).

 

[Gueco]

Quote from Vishnu:

Several issues:

A) along the way you asked me about ten other questions. I can't keep answering your questions. Then it becomes a lesson. I don't give lessons.
B) If you developed software, as I did when i was trading, and figured out the answer to your question it would benefit you more than me saying "yes" or "no"
C) why do you even care so much about my answer? this is why you have posted 1200 times in 2 months and switched your entire identity twice here. You know what I think then: the real answer to your troubles lies within
D) and finally, I'll repeat: you have asked me over a dozen questions when I look back and I've been polite by responding to them. Now you need to just relax, take a deep breath and start coming up with your own answers.

Altucher talks about honesty all the time, about being a better person, about happiness and yet he still cannot answer a simple yes or no question, even worse he resorts to rhetorical tricks to elude us from that fact. My opinion about him is now well established.

 

[Gueco]

Quote from Vishnu:

I love reading this thread.
-James Altucher

Sure you do. We can all see that.

Funny thing is, you say you are all about helping people. So here you are, at a major trading forum discussing a post you put in your blog "to help people be happy", eluding questions, using rhetorical tricks, focusing of saving your reputation instead of focusing in communicating your new message about trading and possibly help hundreds of people more.

You should be eager to answer our questions and get your message across, but that is not what I see you doing. Is it not weird?

 

[failed_trad3r]

I know that Altucher is a bad trader because he talks about high blood pressure and stress from trading.

Once I strted being profitable, trading became super dull and super boring. The fact that Altucher was still stressed out strikes me ass odd for a profitable trader.

He was probably overleveraged, or didnt have a system. Also his backtesting was pretty basic stuff which won't work nowadays, you have to think smarter when backtesting, he traded volatility, but in low volatility you die.

 

[failed_trad3r]

Quote from cornixforex:

Exactly, I can't even imagine how that was like to trade over the phone with $30 commission per order compared to instant executions from the screen and many times cheaper commission structure now.

Trading since 2005... I can't say it got harder too, rather it got easier due to higher volatility on average than before the 2008 crisis.

I agreed, I don't understand some people who say the market barely moves on certain days in 2010 and 2011 and this is because of HFT robots and government liquidity pump and thats killing their ability to make money. Did they even trade in 2005? I looked at charts from 2005, they were even more boring and if I follow their argument they made no money in 2005 either.