If you had to do it all over again....

Acrary,

Please drop me a line at opmtrader@yahoo.com. I have been trying to track you down via PM. I have a legitimate trading opportunity that may interest you, somewhat along the lines of your first post in this thread (i.e. opm). I hope you will be in touch.

I am deeply saddened to hear of your ET departure. I do however thank you for the words of wisdom here in your last thread. Definitely an incredible change of perception. What a revelation! I know that will affect my line of study in the markets.

If we don't get to speak and you do see this, I just want to thank you for the last time. Without seeing a professional such as yourself who was able to make it through a disciplined approach I know many of us may have been led astray. You've been an inspiration to so many of us. Congratulations on finishing your dream home. I hope you and your family spend many happy days there. Take care.

opmtrader
 
Re: acrary's comments about strategic over tactical--been pondering this quite a bit lately. I guess I'm confused in that one would assume you'd first try to determine the direction or action--whether the trading vehicle is trending, countertrending, stagnating, etc--before determining a good entry point.

The guy's obviously very intelligent and very successful in this line of work; I'm just trying to figure what to take from the discussion. Unfortunately, appears he's moved on.
 
Quote from BertH:

I guess I'm confused in that one would assume you'd first try to determine the direction or action--whether the trading vehicle is trending, countertrending, stagnating, etc--before determining a good entry point.
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I'm also confused, since he had clearly mentioned prediction is not necessary. :confused:
 
"I would trade 100% strategic and 0% tactical. By this, I mean I would diversify simple trading styles like trend, countertrend and rangebound over time and markets. I wasted too much time and effort on when to buy and when to sell. My time would've been better served asking; "should I be long, short, or flat?", for the simple strategies in multiple timeframes and markets.
Rather than compounding I would add more timeframes or markets to build the account while continually lowering the overall risk."

As I understand it, following his system development threads also, it appears that Acrary felt that he spent too much time in the precise details and developing complex systems instead of broadening his effective horizon by spreading the simple, yet effective systems he had into multiple markets of varying correlation for an overall smoother equity curve since he'd be maximizing his performance in the risk/reward frontier.

It appears to be a common theme in from what many older traders say.. KISS (keep it simple, stupid), follow the path of least resistance, and manage your money and risk effectively.

Sometimes in the process of system tweaking and developing I wonder if I've lost sight of the forest in examining the minute details of the trees; Acrary's thread served to reinforce the importance of the larger picture.

I hope he will change his mind and continue to share with us his insight but if it is true that he has decided to move on, he'll be missed.

Good luck to you Acrary on your endeavors.
 
tireg, 'preciate your clarification on it. That's probably what I got out of it initially and then--true to my own nature--maybe analyzed myself right out of the KISS mentality.
What you say echoes my own tendency, probably. A longtime trading friend told me that it's very difficult--at best--to be as precise as I'm trying to be and instead to just catch the bigger moves, allowing for more wiggle room.

That's hard for me, because whenever I try the thing like he recommends, the stock craps out. And it's not as if it looks overextended or anything, at least on the daily charts.

Back to the grind, I guess. I'm looking for the most sane and effective way to trade tailored to my own personality. At some point, seems I've got to figure this stuff out.
 
Quote from tireg:

"I would trade 100% strategic and 0% tactical. By this, I mean I would diversify simple trading styles like trend, countertrend and rangebound over time and markets. I wasted too much time and effort on when to buy and when to sell. My time would've been better served asking; "should I be long, short, or flat?", for the simple strategies in multiple timeframes and markets.
Rather than compounding I would add more timeframes or markets to build the account while continually lowering the overall risk."
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I'm just curious for the following circular reasoning/ logic:

A backtesting methodology we use should have been proven truly effective and reliable based on realtime trading.

With our backtesting methodolody, should we be able to analyse/ detect/ remedy this kind of problems when applying a tactical mindset/ approach?

If not, how could we ensure we won't encounter the same/ similar problems again when applying a strategic mindset/ approach?

Would it be possible whether both the tactical and strategic approaches would be workable, or not workable?

How do we know whether a real issue for the problems would be actually existing in our backtesting methodology?

Time span for finding out a real solution , before we would have to do it all over again, would be another issue!

:confused:
 
Wish I could have started prop trading working with experienced traders. Could have avoided many stupid trades. As for college degrees - I hold 3 of them, including engineering and MBA, and they haven't been helpful, except for helping me find good jobs so I can save up capital to do this.
 
Quote from acrary:

Yes, I've fooled myself with the "perception is reality" argument.

My work with my model on immunologic response has forced me to completely change my views on the markets. I used to think the markets were mostly random and chaotic with periods of stable recurring predictability. I couldn't prove this theory because I hadn't come up with a really good way of segmenting market movements and the sample sizes were always statistically small. This was my perception ... and I acted on it so it must have been my reality.

I quickly realized if I wanted to come up to speed on immunologic work I'd have to abandon pattern matching and concentrate on letting the algo work on finding the best strategy for a market. To do this I built a handful of basic strategies and forced the market activity into a time box (1 day, 2 days, etc.). I then used the model (I call it Doron) to determine which of the available strategies should be used for the market in the time period. Anytime a large losing period was found I'd look at the data and determine that I didn't have a strategy for the model to use. So I'd code up a new simple strategy for it to sample (much like your immune system getting fooled the first time it faces a new disease...sample it...become resistant to future occurrences).

In short what I found was a handful of simple strategies in a couple of markets were just as effective as all the years of work I did on finding market inefficiencies, measuring them, and exploiting them with tight edges. I had to give up my basic market premise and now go with "the markets are mostly inefficient and chaotic with small periods of stable predictability but with large periods of stable recurring strategic themes."

In short, at 50 I feel like an old fool. Squandering my time trying to figure out the optimal way to fish in a pond when all I had to do was turn my back and throw out my line into a ocean full of opportunities. Maybe some 20 something will learn something from this and not waste his life like I have with the false perceptions I bought into. Our perceptions are indeed our reality.
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So if I'm reading this right, acrary is saying all the work he's done and posted here on finding and testing for "edges" was basically pointless? :confused:
 
Quote from ang_99:

So if I'm reading this right, acrary is saying all the work he's done and posted here on finding and testing for "edges" was basically pointless? :confused:
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I suspect ACrary has supplied more questions rather than provided answers.:confused:
 
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