Holy grail, does exist, but here is why we don’t have it

[Grob109]

Quote from Wolfe77:

"In your poker analogy, what corrersponds to what?"

Talking about those times a guy gets a good feel of the strength of another guy's hand, sometimes even the exact cards. A lot of guys just guess and get it right occassionally. But the really good players seem to hit it a lot more often than random. When they're beat, they know more than than random, when the other guy is bluffing, ect. A lot of good players play numbers poker, that's not what this is. This is the next level.

It goes quite a bit higher, I'd imagine.

thanks for your response.

The poker analogy comes up occasionally and most of the commentary is related to a betting paradigm that is used in trading.

The humor o all of these analogies is that most of the commentary is quite illogical.

You made some points that would relate to the descretionary aspects of some trading that uses betting.

Trading is a really tough situation for a lot of people. And they aren't ever going to get a break in beconing able to do it because of their poor choices here and there.

My look at poker is secondary to my look at blackjack which I have played successfully where they do it like Vegas. I owe my sucess to he cards in he back of the book "Beat the Dealer". Beating dealers turned out to be easy.

In the poker on TV it seems to be a good entertainment to watch occassionally.

The what is what looks like the following to me.

the money on the table corresponds to winning on trades.

The sequence of going around the table looks like monitoring the market with pearticular emphasis on T&S which could be made into a chart where each par would be a player's turn to contribute to price change.

The deck of cards looks like the fundamental analysis of the market. That is, there are an assortment of regular reporting kinds of topics and they are arranged for reporting in the specific sequence that is how the deck is stacked. Differnt players get different reports and their are some common once a round quarterly reports being put on the table. Three then one more then one more.

As the hand is played time is spent and the cost of the time spent participating is found by looking at chips being proferred in the order that they are.

The trading cycle comes to an end and someone reaches forward or the chips are pushed to someone. Their are some early exits where "stops" are hit.

Hands being played go along and gradually those who do not know how to play go away.

I do see that there is a routine of monitoring, analysis, decision making and taking timely action. That is a common thing to lots of money oriented cycles that people deal with.

Obviously a lot of ET traders should play poker instead for a host of reasons.

If a person wanted to duplicate "beat the dealer" as in blackjack, there is the same theme of cards being played except that in BJ the deck is not shuffled between hands and it is shuffled between hands in poker. The causal factor is how many cards it takes to play a hand. BJ changed over the years. Especially when dealers went to using multiple decks of cards in BJ. That has not happened in poker as yet. It may not because of the "odds" component of poker as a game.

So learning BJ is a snap because you just use a concept of deck favorability and do the trading thing called "scaling in" as you add contracts over time. This is like the adding of chips, etc..

Comparing learning poker with learning to trade is the point of my wanting to know what is what.

To learn poker you learn the whole nine yards just like you learn the cards in the back of "Beat the Dealer" for BJ.

The poker analogies to trading go south at this point (the learning part and the playing part) it appears.

Traders do not learn about trading.

Then traders cannot play the game (trade).

It has been puzzling me for quite a while why there is so much failure required by the chioces being made by most people.

The succession of not seeing the markets; not using a routine; not learning; and not playing is a real rough situation for anyone to be in.

 

[jonnyy40]

Which would be more efficacious for a 'trader' to visit if he thought there was an emotional motive behind some of his 'trading'? NLP practitioner,Hypnotherapist or other type of therapist?

 

[Wolfe77]

"However, I will say this: If you lose your perspective [which you seem to be doing] and begin assuming that it is somehow "beyond-current-scientific-understanding" that seperates the great from the average, you better get to the average stage first, say like some of the people on this site that make $200k/year. I gurantee you there is plenty of profit at that level before you have to worry about the likes of Cohen, Soros, etc etc, and reaching for meta-physical explanations for their success."

Nitro,

This is just how I work. Taking tangents, no matter how extreme. I also take the simpler ones. I take all of them. One reason I may talk about the extreme tangents more than the simpler ones is simply the level of "interesting".

I didn't come to this particular tangent by seeking out "paranormal". Was following a very scientific path, one day the path jumped the border, and it was the path I was on, so I kept going.

There are many paths being traveled at the same time. Some very interesting fractal analysis based on the curving crystalline structure of a price chart. Various sentiment analysis. A form of competitive intelligence using information on a price chart and in the news. All sorts of things. And the meta-physical thing. Why not? Its there, it is something. And of all of it, the meta-physical has to hold the most potential. So, why not?

I never came into this looking to make money. Market has always just been a particular interest. Very few are able to see this, but a price chart is a symmetrical dance of TICKS, numbers, relationships, etc. Our universe is much too big to actually SEE in it's entirety. A market is small enough. One gets to see how people act and react in a parallel universe. For me, this has always just been a study of people. Same reason I play poker.

I've beaten both games pretty regularly in the past, but only because I can't afford to lose, not because I wanted to win. Just wanted to play in order to really understand the game, one can't swim without getting in the water sort of thing.

Only recently did it occur that I could fund some abstract research by applying this with the purpose of making money. This is going to sound like an infomercial for anyone more interested in "net worth" than in what lies just beyond that next horizon. For years, this was just that next horizon. It kind of still is, just rather travel in style for a while. I hear one gets the same view from first class.

Just saying, I'm not as wet behind the ears as most guys who go down the paranormal path.

 

[Wolfe77]

Grob,

Your way of making the analogy gets easier by applying the market to poker.

Specifically, heads up no limit holdem. Hole card represent side specific info. Board cards represent info for both sides.

From there, the game must be stretched into the abstract. Both games, actually.

Both are games of bluff and re-bluff, as well as value plays. Odds and future probabilities. In a market, its what happens next. In poker, the next card. In both, how the players react to what happens or doesn't happen.

Imagine standing on the rail and being able to bet with others standing on the rail on whether one of the heads up player's chip stack will go up or down from hand to hand. This is essentially what we are able to do in a market. If we get big enough, we're actually able to sit at the table and play for a while, while the rail bets on or against us. All the money in the room is tied together. The actions of the rail affect the play at the table, if a player can get enough side bets, he might throw a hand, or be more inclined to buy it. And the other way around.

That's just the way I see it, tho. Probably a lot of ways.

For me, Market is just another form of poker played with a different deck of cards. Same guys playing tho. Maybe different names, but identical personalities. Just an extracted poker game, not unlike an internet rebuy tournament with a different probability generator.

 

[Wolfe77]

Wow. In silver, it was almost new.

The gut responded more to the level of senitment around the different commodity boards I follow.

Too much bullishness.

Some parts of Market Theory require a certain amount of money to be on the wrong side of a move. They were talking about $20 as if it had already happened and were planning how to trade from $20 to $25.

Oof.

Traditionally, that has always been a warning sign. I exited most futures longs on Wed of last week. Thursday, down. Friday, down. Today, dang...

That exit saved better than $70k in open profit.

There was no reason to sell. It was a bull market that had just broken out to the upside with some followthru. Technically, it was up and away. Fundamentals are still bullish. Really, the only way to have seen this coming was to understand the PEOPLE that play this market.

My record in this market is getting pretty. The very top in April. The next top in May (within a few pennies). The low in June. A few smaller highs and lows. Then the high in Sept.

I know of no typical form of analysis that can do this. Not yet sure this isn't just a streak of luck. Been going for almost a year, running better than 90% on some pretty major moves in some very volatile markets. Mid December will be a year. Currently, a 25k beginning account is well over half a million.

When I get a little better at this, if these sorts of markets continue, next year Larry William's record could be broken. Something of a personal goal. Lol.