It has been some time but I recall going through every article on his site and all the code and could not get it to work. Perhaps that was my deficiency though.
eMesa system
- Thread starter swtrader
- Start date
hmm seeing the drawdown compared to the profit frankly I find that not terrible.
I cannot believe that some of who I considered as ET's smarter traders are still contributing to a post regarding what is obviously one of the finest and simultaneously most pathetic forms of beautifying the disgraceful smell of snake-oil with an old-nursing-home-granny perfume of scientism.
I have had an intense look at the claims of MESA, and it is nothing but a system featuring drawdowns that are inacceptable to any serious trader. IMHO a smarter 12-year old could construct something more impressive and reliable on a Commodore 64.
The scientism is based on chaos theory being applicable to the market and its cycles therefore being predictable, like rivers that meander.
This would almost negate the mandelbrot fractal theory, which entirely applies to the markets and is incompatible with cycles theory, in that it would require people's ability to predict where the markets will go. If they could, where would we all be?
Although I do not believe in entire market sufficiency, my humble experience has taught me that there certainly is enough sufficiency in the market to cause a system based on entirely mathematical cycles theory like MESA, to fail in the long run.
I believe that a 40% drawdown is inacceptable in any strategy, there is no excuse, since we can never predict with certainty whether the 40% drawdown may be followed by another 40% drawdown, which is indeed inevitable, just like it is inevitable that if we roll dice long enough, we will get the same number of eyes 100 times in a row.
Since the double-drawdown on MESA is more likely to happen, I see no point in why anyone would be trading it, including the author.
All this MESA theory is complete nonsense since markets are not controlled by exterior circumstances or events, but by people's reaction to them and their emotions.
A good trader is not a mathematician, he's a psychologist.
J. E is not. He is but an ex-trader that continues to make a glittering career as a snake-oiling scumbag.
My 5 Cents.
~Scientist
I have had an intense look at the claims of MESA, and it is nothing but a system featuring drawdowns that are inacceptable to any serious trader. IMHO a smarter 12-year old could construct something more impressive and reliable on a Commodore 64.
The scientism is based on chaos theory being applicable to the market and its cycles therefore being predictable, like rivers that meander.
This would almost negate the mandelbrot fractal theory, which entirely applies to the markets and is incompatible with cycles theory, in that it would require people's ability to predict where the markets will go. If they could, where would we all be?
Although I do not believe in entire market sufficiency, my humble experience has taught me that there certainly is enough sufficiency in the market to cause a system based on entirely mathematical cycles theory like MESA, to fail in the long run.
I believe that a 40% drawdown is inacceptable in any strategy, there is no excuse, since we can never predict with certainty whether the 40% drawdown may be followed by another 40% drawdown, which is indeed inevitable, just like it is inevitable that if we roll dice long enough, we will get the same number of eyes 100 times in a row.
Since the double-drawdown on MESA is more likely to happen, I see no point in why anyone would be trading it, including the author.
All this MESA theory is complete nonsense since markets are not controlled by exterior circumstances or events, but by people's reaction to them and their emotions.
A good trader is not a mathematician, he's a psychologist.
J. E is not. He is but an ex-trader that continues to make a glittering career as a snake-oiling scumbag.
My 5 Cents.
~Scientist
So, the Mesa thread came back to life again.
I did not plan on breaking in again if it were not for some interesting posts which appeared on ET in the meantime. As some
posters on the Mesa thread have pointed out, a simple MA system has about the same potential as "rocket science" Mesa, in
fact MA has perhaps more potential by virtue of its simplicity.
A few days ago andrasnm published the "Pretty Good Oscillator" (PGO) (by Marc Johnson).
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598
This unpretentious little piece certainly does not shove us any "rocket" BS down our throats. Reading on, andrasnm points us
to some coding which is charmingly fresh in its naivety. No multiple coding errors as with Mesa, sidetracking even high
powered engineers (introduced maliciously as some bad tongues tell us).
In http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598&perpage=6&pagenumber=2
andrasnm goes on to inform us about some backtesting of this little gem. Where are you JE?
Of course, many members of this board would refuse to trade this reckless little PGO gem. However, let us compare these
backtested figures with what we got from our radiologist Mesa sycophant with his puppeteer broker behind the curtain. To the
horror of some of us, Mesa exposed the radiologist to a 46% drawdown. Andras finds a year 2000 drawdown 20.80% Over roughly
14 years the drawdown is given as 46.11%. Profits seem to be at least as good as those of the radiologist. Of course many
questions remain unanswered on details as issues traded. at least, anybody interested on this board can pump the code and
data into his backtesting system and find out for himself - good or bad. Mesa definitely seems to have a problem here, as
some engineering guys seem to tell us.
conclusion:
(1) Mesa and its underlying "rocket science" has been weighed in rather accurately on this board. The "rocket science" boiler
plate is simply a rehash of what you find in many graduate level engineering textbooks. If you are interested learning
something, stick with the textbooks, the rehash appears to contain plenty of errors which seem to have difficulty in getting
corrected.
(2) The "rocket science"supposedly underlying Mesa are in fact mathematical theories, some of which exist now for more than
200 years. It took engineers tens of years of hard work to forge tools based on these theories before achieving the marvelous
results we all admire.
(3) It is not because bright engineers managed to make rockets fly to the planets with these theories that pulling off some
mumbo jumbo with "rocket science" in the markets will make you rich. Wake up EJ, show us how to do this, many of us are not
convinced, sparing you some of the harsher language.
(4) If you ever wonder about 95% of the entrants losing their shirts in the markets, take a look at the reception EJ's books
get from readers at for example amazon's:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...24511-5598438?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-re
views
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...24511-5598438?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-re
views
Curiously the reception of these books seems to reflect this 95% figure.
(5) ET members, stick to your guns. We learned again from this sequel that as long as EJ's
and his sycophants hang around there will always be plenty of fools waiting to be separated from
their money in our markets. Keep on spreading the good word EJ.
I did not plan on breaking in again if it were not for some interesting posts which appeared on ET in the meantime. As some
posters on the Mesa thread have pointed out, a simple MA system has about the same potential as "rocket science" Mesa, in
fact MA has perhaps more potential by virtue of its simplicity.
A few days ago andrasnm published the "Pretty Good Oscillator" (PGO) (by Marc Johnson).
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598
This unpretentious little piece certainly does not shove us any "rocket" BS down our throats. Reading on, andrasnm points us
to some coding which is charmingly fresh in its naivety. No multiple coding errors as with Mesa, sidetracking even high
powered engineers (introduced maliciously as some bad tongues tell us).
In http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598&perpage=6&pagenumber=2
andrasnm goes on to inform us about some backtesting of this little gem. Where are you JE?
Of course, many members of this board would refuse to trade this reckless little PGO gem. However, let us compare these
backtested figures with what we got from our radiologist Mesa sycophant with his puppeteer broker behind the curtain. To the
horror of some of us, Mesa exposed the radiologist to a 46% drawdown. Andras finds a year 2000 drawdown 20.80% Over roughly
14 years the drawdown is given as 46.11%. Profits seem to be at least as good as those of the radiologist. Of course many
questions remain unanswered on details as issues traded. at least, anybody interested on this board can pump the code and
data into his backtesting system and find out for himself - good or bad. Mesa definitely seems to have a problem here, as
some engineering guys seem to tell us.
conclusion:
(1) Mesa and its underlying "rocket science" has been weighed in rather accurately on this board. The "rocket science" boiler
plate is simply a rehash of what you find in many graduate level engineering textbooks. If you are interested learning
something, stick with the textbooks, the rehash appears to contain plenty of errors which seem to have difficulty in getting
corrected.
(2) The "rocket science"supposedly underlying Mesa are in fact mathematical theories, some of which exist now for more than
200 years. It took engineers tens of years of hard work to forge tools based on these theories before achieving the marvelous
results we all admire.
(3) It is not because bright engineers managed to make rockets fly to the planets with these theories that pulling off some
mumbo jumbo with "rocket science" in the markets will make you rich. Wake up EJ, show us how to do this, many of us are not
convinced, sparing you some of the harsher language.
(4) If you ever wonder about 95% of the entrants losing their shirts in the markets, take a look at the reception EJ's books
get from readers at for example amazon's:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...24511-5598438?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-re
views
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...24511-5598438?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-re
views
Curiously the reception of these books seems to reflect this 95% figure.
(5) ET members, stick to your guns. We learned again from this sequel that as long as EJ's
and his sycophants hang around there will always be plenty of fools waiting to be separated from
their money in our markets. Keep on spreading the good word EJ.
Sorry, I messed up in transmitting, I'll try again.
So, the Mesa thread came back to life again.
I did not plan on breaking in again if it were not for some interesting posts which appeared on ET in the meantime. As some
posters on the Mesa thread have pointed out, a simple MA system has about the same potential as "rocket science" Mesa, in
fact MA has perhaps more potential by virtue of its simplicity.
A few days ago andrasnm published the "Pretty Good Oscillator" (PGO) (by Marc Johnson).
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598
This unpretentious little piece certainly does not shove us any "rocket" BS down our throats. Reading on, andrasnm points us
to some coding which is charmingly fresh in its naivety. No multiple coding errors as with Mesa, sidetracking even high
powered engineers (introduced maliciously as some bad tongues tell us).
In http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 andrasnm goes on to inform us about
some backtesting of this little gem. Where are you JE?
Of course, many members of this board would refuse to trade this reckless little PGO gem. However, let us compare these
backtested figures with what we got from our radiologist Mesa sycophant with his puppeteer broker behind the curtain. To the
horror of some of us, Mesa exposed the radiologist to a 46% drawdown. Andras finds a year 2000 drawdown 20.80% Over roughly
14 years the drawdown is given as 46.11%. Profits seem to be at least as good as those of the radiologist. Of course many
questions remain unanswered on details as issues traded. at least, anybody interested on this board can pump the code and
data into his backtesting system and find out for himself - good or bad. Mesa definitely seems to have a problem here, as
some engineering guys seem to tell us.
Conclusion:
(1) Mesa and its underlying "rocket science" has been weighed in rather accurately on this board. The "rocket science"
boilerplate is simply a rehash of what you find in many graduate level engineering textbooks. If you are interested learning
something, stick with the textbooks, the rehash appears to contain plenty of errors which seem to have difficulty in getting
corrected.
(2) The "rocket science"supposedly underlying Mesa are in fact mathematical theories, some of which exist now for more than
200 years. It took engineers tens of years of hard work to forge tools based on these theories before achieving the marvelous
results we all admire.
(3) It is not because bright engineers managed to make rockets fly to the planets with these theories that pulling off some
mumbo jumbo with "rocket science" in the markets will make you rich. Wake up JE, show us how to do this, many of us are not
convinced, sparing you some of the harsher language.
(4) If you ever wonder about 95% of the entrants losing their shirts in the markets, take a look at the reception JE's books
get from readers at for example amazon's:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471405671/ref=cm_rev_all_1/002-6324511-5598438?
v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471151963/ref=cm_rev_all_1/002-6324511-5598438?
v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews
Curiously the reception of these books seems to reflect this 95% figure.
(5) ET members, stick to your guns. We learned again from this sequel that as long as JE's and his sycophants hang around
there will always be enough fools waiting to be separated from their money in our markets. Keep on spreading the good word
JE.
So, the Mesa thread came back to life again.
I did not plan on breaking in again if it were not for some interesting posts which appeared on ET in the meantime. As some
posters on the Mesa thread have pointed out, a simple MA system has about the same potential as "rocket science" Mesa, in
fact MA has perhaps more potential by virtue of its simplicity.
A few days ago andrasnm published the "Pretty Good Oscillator" (PGO) (by Marc Johnson).
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598
This unpretentious little piece certainly does not shove us any "rocket" BS down our throats. Reading on, andrasnm points us
to some coding which is charmingly fresh in its naivety. No multiple coding errors as with Mesa, sidetracking even high
powered engineers (introduced maliciously as some bad tongues tell us).
In http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18598&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 andrasnm goes on to inform us about
some backtesting of this little gem. Where are you JE?
Of course, many members of this board would refuse to trade this reckless little PGO gem. However, let us compare these
backtested figures with what we got from our radiologist Mesa sycophant with his puppeteer broker behind the curtain. To the
horror of some of us, Mesa exposed the radiologist to a 46% drawdown. Andras finds a year 2000 drawdown 20.80% Over roughly
14 years the drawdown is given as 46.11%. Profits seem to be at least as good as those of the radiologist. Of course many
questions remain unanswered on details as issues traded. at least, anybody interested on this board can pump the code and
data into his backtesting system and find out for himself - good or bad. Mesa definitely seems to have a problem here, as
some engineering guys seem to tell us.
Conclusion:
(1) Mesa and its underlying "rocket science" has been weighed in rather accurately on this board. The "rocket science"
boilerplate is simply a rehash of what you find in many graduate level engineering textbooks. If you are interested learning
something, stick with the textbooks, the rehash appears to contain plenty of errors which seem to have difficulty in getting
corrected.
(2) The "rocket science"supposedly underlying Mesa are in fact mathematical theories, some of which exist now for more than
200 years. It took engineers tens of years of hard work to forge tools based on these theories before achieving the marvelous
results we all admire.
(3) It is not because bright engineers managed to make rockets fly to the planets with these theories that pulling off some
mumbo jumbo with "rocket science" in the markets will make you rich. Wake up JE, show us how to do this, many of us are not
convinced, sparing you some of the harsher language.
(4) If you ever wonder about 95% of the entrants losing their shirts in the markets, take a look at the reception JE's books
get from readers at for example amazon's:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471405671/ref=cm_rev_all_1/002-6324511-5598438?
v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471151963/ref=cm_rev_all_1/002-6324511-5598438?
v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews
Curiously the reception of these books seems to reflect this 95% figure.
(5) ET members, stick to your guns. We learned again from this sequel that as long as JE's and his sycophants hang around
there will always be enough fools waiting to be separated from their money in our markets. Keep on spreading the good word
JE.
Sorry for adding to this forum, but I'm interested if others are aware of the differences between these 2 and in particular comments on e-mesa?
R-Mesa seems to be a daytrading system that is in an awful drawdown (see quote below from Attain Capital) whereas e-mesa is a swing system that purports to be very successful (see http://www.mesa-systems.com/emesa.htm) showing a 12 month return of 115% and now marketed to eSignal subscribers.
The full Attain article is at http://www.attaincapital.com/alternatives/alt_sep2605.htm. It begins:
What has happened to R-Mesa? The system which has hung its hat on consistency since its release in 2002 is in the midst of its worst drawdown since release. Since Attain began tracking the actual client fills on the system in August of 2002, R-Mesa has had an uncanny ability to make new equity highs - hitting 10 new equity highs in the first 27 months after it was released.
The pattern seemed to be a new equity high, then about 3 or 4 months of losses down to a drawdown low, then another 2 or 3 months up to a new equity high. In fact, when excluding the months where the system made new equity highs in consecutive months - the average time between equity highs was just a little over 5 months.
But here we are sitting at 11 months since the last equity high and a new post-release Max DD of -57.60%, or ($17,280) based on the developer's recommended initial balance of $30,000; leaving investors asking what is going on with R-Mesa.
The numbers don't look all that good - R-Mesa is down over -49.4% YTD (-46% after today's $800 winning trade), and is in the midst of an 11 month, 57.60% drawdown which started in early November of last year and hit a new low last week on Thursday.
These numbers are far from the average annualized gain of 41% the system sported coming into 2005
R-Mesa seems to be a daytrading system that is in an awful drawdown (see quote below from Attain Capital) whereas e-mesa is a swing system that purports to be very successful (see http://www.mesa-systems.com/emesa.htm) showing a 12 month return of 115% and now marketed to eSignal subscribers.
The full Attain article is at http://www.attaincapital.com/alternatives/alt_sep2605.htm. It begins:
What has happened to R-Mesa? The system which has hung its hat on consistency since its release in 2002 is in the midst of its worst drawdown since release. Since Attain began tracking the actual client fills on the system in August of 2002, R-Mesa has had an uncanny ability to make new equity highs - hitting 10 new equity highs in the first 27 months after it was released.
The pattern seemed to be a new equity high, then about 3 or 4 months of losses down to a drawdown low, then another 2 or 3 months up to a new equity high. In fact, when excluding the months where the system made new equity highs in consecutive months - the average time between equity highs was just a little over 5 months.
But here we are sitting at 11 months since the last equity high and a new post-release Max DD of -57.60%, or ($17,280) based on the developer's recommended initial balance of $30,000; leaving investors asking what is going on with R-Mesa.
The numbers don't look all that good - R-Mesa is down over -49.4% YTD (-46% after today's $800 winning trade), and is in the midst of an 11 month, 57.60% drawdown which started in early November of last year and hit a new low last week on Thursday.
These numbers are far from the average annualized gain of 41% the system sported coming into 2005