Efficient market theory; Total junk still being taught to people?

that's it guys sorry about so many attachments i'm not posting the links because they won't work unless you have an institutional investor subscription
 

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Quote from aphexcoil:



Take your feel good philosophy elsewhere. If you have some scientific reason to show the market is efficient or not efficient, post it. However, this Zen crap that you post under 5 handles is getting really old.

Actually, that was a GREAT quote about the markets.
That's the idea that's being debated here...
Can the market be quantified scientifically.
LTCM failed to realize how organic the markets are.
ORGANIC action was what destroyed their system, and profits.

The ORGANIC properties to the market are the hardest part to quantify.

Trying to quantify human behavior reminds me of the great "Foundation" books, by assimov.

 
DarkHorse,

Excellent Commentary!

there's a saying: "don't look the gift horse in the mouth", and its supposed to mean or suggest not to be overly suspicious of a favorable circumstance or outcome. However, to battle hardend veterans, one is taught to ALWAYS look the gift horse in the mouth, otherwise you wouldn't notice that perhaps he needs dental work; and if your point that out, you've made a friend.

Well, what we as traders do, is give vent to these vaunted theorums (EMH, etc.). Frankly, I thought I missed another Holders (www.holders.com being developed by Merrill Lynch), and another way to trade the markets.

By giving vent to these vaunted thories, we are looking that gift horse (the markets) directly in the mouth, and boy, does it have horrendous breath. It need dental work badly.

Hence, EMH is to the Markets, what Icing is to a Cake; namely a means to cover over, dress up, put a smiley face on a pot marked cake. Of couse it doesn't work, however, it (the theory) earned a number of individuals their PhD's. Those glassy eyed theorists were desperately trying to put their arms around the entire market phenonimum, and put some handles on it, so that it could be picked up, inspected, looked at and digested.

In reality, for those of us you survive by trading, we know that this gift horse needs the Dentist, and there's nothing efficient about these markets. Just take a look at the frustration of being caught short with a positive Fed announcement, or vise versa.




Quote from darkhorse:




I think this might be closer to the truth than you think, but not out of any desire to maintain rationality on the part of institutionals. I doubt there is much rationality to maintain in the first place, even in professional circles. They are like a bunch of drunks all assuming there is some other designated driver behind the wheel. (If everyone is too dumb to be allowed a contrarian opinion, or any opinion at all for that matter, from whose forehead is the rationality springing forth?) Plus, mutual funds and investment banks want stocks to go in one direction- UP- at all times. What is rational about that?

There is an old joke, why did the redneck marry his sister-
because he had to.

In that same line of thinking, why do goliath institutionals hold for long periods of time? Because they have to.

When it takes you three to five days to unload a substantial position, you have to take a longer term view of that position whether you like it or not. You just can't trade around girth like that, the slippage would eat you alive, as Soros learned when he got shredded on his mammoth S&P exit in the aftermath of the '87 crash. You always give some up on the way in and out- but to who?

The big guys hate the little guys because the big guys know that their inside knowledge and staying power and marketing muscle comes at a price- the price of inflexibility and bulk and girth, which necessitates slowness of movement. And slowness of movement means you are vulnerable to being repeatedly picked off by faster, nimbler foe. Not much more than a nick or a cut, but those little nicks and cuts can add up very quickly when they are coming from all sides, especially in an environment that has moved from benign to threatening.

My guess is that the average mutual fund manager hates small traders, and his real fear is not that the small trader is irrational- but rather that small traders are ganging up on him and clawing him down on his ins and outs, and that the multiple nicks and cuts will add up to real bleeding over time. He may exaggerate in his own mind, especially if this helps to shift blame away from his own ineptitude- but the suspicion remains. This natural bias on the part of the mutual fund industry (us against them, long term buy and hold against the forces of evil, damn mercenary gunners should be outlawed!!), combined with arrogance, fear and a need to place blame somewhere other than Wall Street when things were falling apart, led naturally to the PDT rule imho. It's of course obvious that 99% of successful traders operate well above the 25K line, but hey, it looks good for us to be "doing something," it's a blow against those $#%@#$ traders, and why not kill the next generation before they hatch? Like Herod trying to insure the safety of his throne, three for the price of one.

p.s. I may be biased, as beta ripping, window dressing, benchmark loving, relative performance touting money managers with no respect for their clients and no respect for risk pretty much make me sick in general.
 
Quote from aphexcoil:



Take your feel good philosophy elsewhere. If you have some scientific reason to show the market is efficient or not efficient, post it. However, this Zen crap that you post under 5 handles is getting really old.

Hey Applehead,

How 'scientific' was the 15pt. S&P 2 min spike we just saw??? Quantifiy that! HERB...
 
Quote from buzzy2:

There is a reason the Grossman guy doesn't believe in EMH.
also, see below for 2 more articles.

Yeah. Grossman runs a pretty nice hedge fund. I've read about him over 2yrs ago. In fact, all the "new finance" professors who don't believe in EMH are setting up hedge funds and laughing their way to the bank while they teach on the side. Prof. Andrew Lo of MIT Sloan set up a fund recently in 2000. He's a superquant. There's no numbers yet.

Daytraders, don't laugh at the new academics!! They are raking it in too!

They are digging hard and doing fine research to find "anomalies" or "inefficiencies" and capitalizing on these. And it's easier for them to raise capital than the average prop trader like us. :( Prof. Lo raised like $300M practically overnite from a single investor Deutsche Bank.

Though trading and education are NOT highly correlated, it absolutely doesn't hurt to have some. I don't know why people are so critical of that. If it's not useful directly in trading for your particular style, it can still be a useful marketing tool to raise capital. For other styles, it's crucial. Read the posting about James Simon who was an award winning math professor who started Renaissance Hedge fund in Long Island. In fact most of the top guys are actually very well educated. Bruce Kovner, Monroe Trout were both from Harvard. And other managers went to top MBA programs or undergrad.

Though the stuff they learn in school probably does NOT apply directly to trading, but the discipline of working hard, seeing through things, not quitting when you face challenges(either they be academic, personal, or market catastrophe), etc. are all valuable lessons to be had.

good luck trading.

-trader99
 
I have no problem with professors who are intelligent, open minded and smart enough to have researched their beliefs. I enjoy speaking with them. It is just that one expects stupid people to make generalizations and defend them at all cost. I expect intelligent people to analyze and redefine what they believe. I hope that I am willing to do the same. I just find it amazing that people who were supposed to be learned were so wrong and so unwilling to accept reality. I pretty much did not go into the trading field (untill 11 years later) because I believed my econ professors about emh.

I grew up in Greenwich, Ct and taught tennis at a club off of Round Hill road. Some of the guys I worked out ran hedge funds. I was sort of set on going to law school but I never really pursued the markets because of a few dopey professors espousing emh in the early 1980's. I do not blame them because I am not even pissed off, but I think of their arrogance and the disservice they did and wonder hey how can guys like these teach our kids during their most formative beer drinking years.
 
Uh, is he hiring?

what's his email?

Quote from trader99:



Yeah. Grossman runs a pretty nice hedge fund. I've read about him over 2yrs ago. In fact, all the "new finance" professors who don't believe in EMH are setting up hedge funds and laughing their way to the bank while they teach on the side. Prof. Andrew Lo of MIT Sloan set up a fund recently in 2000. He's a superquant. There's no numbers yet.

Daytraders, don't laugh at the new academics!! They are raking it in too!

They are digging hard and doing fine research to find "anomalies" or "inefficiencies" and capitalizing on these. And it's easier for them to raise capital than the average prop trader like us. :( Prof. Lo raised like $300M practically overnite from a single investor Deutsche Bank.

Though trading and education are NOT highly correlated, it absolutely doesn't hurt to have some. I don't know why people are so critical of that. If it's not useful directly in trading for your particular style, it can still be a useful marketing tool to raise capital. For other styles, it's crucial. Read the posting about James Simon who was an award winning math professor who started Renaissance Hedge fund in Long Island. In fact most of the top guys are actually very well educated. Bruce Kovner, Monroe Trout were both from Harvard. And other managers went to top MBA programs or undergrad.

Though the stuff they learn in school probably does NOT apply directly to trading, but the discipline of working hard, seeing through things, not quitting when you face challenges(either they be academic, personal, or market catastrophe), etc. are all valuable lessons to be had.

good luck trading.

-trader99
 
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