I read all your posts in this matter and consider what you are saying to be essentially correct. However, I think you are missing one ingridient. Here is my opinion as to what it is:
It is not that these people (Cohen Soros Biggest bond/oil trader etc) anticipate what will happen. It is that when a [random event to us]
decision happens by a market mover, they
initially lose money like the rest of us because they too are trading logical relationships. By it's very nature, the move will be counter intuitive and most likely anti-percentage.
Here is where they are far more likely to get it right in the repeated trials that follow - they know when the move is
not an anomaly, take the initial loss, and start building a position to the "counterintuitive", or at least take the small loss and use the information from the counter intutive situation to trade something that has not yet corrected. In other words, is this decision unfolding in the market by one or two market movers, an anomaly? Or is it going to be duplicated by other market movers causing a wave of market movers to create a new trend?
It is this that seperates the biggest traders from the average traders - they know when an event is a "one-off" fluctuation and stay the course or even add, and when the event is not a ripple but a wave, and the beginning of a trend against their position that can hurt them. No chart can give you this information because charts don't repeat exactly, they rhyme. Only experience in assesing
information can tell you when the market is rhyming and when it has changed it's tune.
I [believe I] have only mastered the former skill - that of knowing when something is out of kilter. But I am nowhere near mastering the latter of when a move is signaling that the market is changing into a new paradigm, or not. It may be impossible in my position of being a small trader since premium information rarely flows to the small trader. You see, these guys are good not because they are just good, but because they also get the
information accurately, promptly, and know how to piece it all together to form what you call intuition. Even if I had the intuition, I would not have the information access that they do. It is a chicken and egg problem.
Anyway, adding a little "science" to what you believe is [probably wrongly] "voodoo" [unexplained phenomena.]
nitro
P.S. Notice that many would be talking "stop loss" as their savior, and that is where their analysis ends. In the case of the big players they are either adding to the position that caused the loss, or taking on a new position in the direction of the loss, usually in a lagged market. A stop loss
by itself is a form of ignorance. If you stop loss, that often means that another position is right. Either you add to a position if you truly have information advantage, or you seek the other end of the stick.
Quote from Wolfe77:
Always, somebody tries this:
"so lets put your intuition to the test.
Tomorrow, Will the US stock market close lower or higher than todays close."
First, it doesn't work that way. I choose neither market or time. It happens when it happens.
Second, I'm not out to prove anything other than to myself. What sounds like an infomercial to ya'll is my way of meeting one or two out of a thousand who are working on similar angles.
This happens on every forum, some jaded somebody expecting me to start selling something. Lol. And several other unimaginative individuals who can only poke fun at what they are unable to understand. Funny, again, and not my problem.
I'm looking for those who understand this already. All the others, ya'll can think what you want.
There are stories of Cohen that resemble what I've been doing. The biggest bond trader on Wall Street does it. The biggest oil trader.
It doesn't suprise me that daytraders and other grinders don't get this. They prefer to crunch numbers in order to understand a people game. Lol. That's the easiest level of the game, numbers. The really big guys take it to another level.
Maybe grinders are grinders because they are unable to take it to the next level. Hmmm.
Lol.
