Improving Trading Skills

Quote from kubilai:

So do you act more like an engineer who applies processes to manufacture things efficiently? That as opposed to a scientist who tends to be detached from whatever she's studying. It would make sense from your involvement comment.

Another thing that you tend to say is that the edge as most consider it is irrelevant. Do you say that because a lot of people think of an edge as some kind of holy grail that they can find and thereafter be successful, whereas you're focused on refining your system so that it'll accept whatever the market wants to pay you? So it's not one edge, or multiple edges, but a whole lot of little things, added/subtracted over time that makes an effective system. And after decades of refinement, you can't look at it and say what the edge(s) are any more?
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Well now that you mention it I am an engineer with and advanced degree in technical writing. My alma mater is raising a billion dollars. So I am dropping in up there at the advancement office occassionally and working in seven sectors of capitalizing steams.

I must say when I am doing science though I am not detached.

I really dig being able to skip the summer fallow in the dakotas and increase production annually by 25 bushels of fine grains every year instead of every other year. Yea!!! and hooray!!!! for the soil and subsoil biota who are pumping water for me.

Your thesis in the main paragraph is looked at me as you would see it if I turned the paper it is written on sideways. I see that thesis as a thin unreadable unusable edge of a mistaken slice of market strategizing from no constructive viewpoint whatsoever.
That is my picture of edges and the like including their total synthesis.

There is an elephant in the room however.

Markets came into being. Dow did the deed. He said look at the elephant all of it.

People owned entities in markets and wanted to do best by their investments.

Markets have variables it is said.

To understand the market you come up with a basic relationship of the variables. This happened right aftr Dow did the deed. that wasn't hard to do was it?

It is stated in Boolean Algebra (1842). Each numeration base has its own algebra. The natural base is the Napierian not and it is an irrational number and not easily subject to an algebra.

long ago and way before it was an enterprise to make money "trading" the markets, they were assessed and valued from an investing point of view.

Risk management came to mean "balancing". the time of balancing by financial planners came to mean at times of maximum fear.

The alternative was to consider three sales phrases. Not matter which was chosen a path to wealth was determined. The three buzz words were security, growth and income.

Many of my relatives were in the NYSR and my buying a sports mercedes three years out of college for cash in Kopenhagen on a trip with my new wife was "unbelievable".

The market and its operation are simple constructed from the biggest pieces to the smallest factors and used as a way to extract money conmtinually as fast as possible. the market and the trader are a system and system analysis is used to make money.

three things constitute a system: a structure, a process within the structure and the yield of results that the process gives you operating in thestructure.

300 bucks starting in 1957 gives you a 1960 190SL in Kopenhagen in the summer of 1960, as a small by product of using a systemmic approach to trading in the financial markets. Read Darvas as a concurrent model of possibilites. I was a dancing assistant at Arthur Murray in high school for laughs.

It was simply a do it yourself kit that had characteristics that once refined precipitated SEC citations for insider trading at frequent intervals until they shaped up and got off my case. SEC citations for insider trading is what in science is called a direct measure of effectiveness and efficiency by a mistaken measurer.

when classifying stocks by earnings and price performance was invented, I could use the beta software to do my universe sort in seconds and show the three sectors most important to me 1, 0, and 7 on one list whose size I dictated from a culling of 15,000 stocks. this is SA at its best.

Coming up with scoring is an another example to consider. It answers three questions:

Where you are in the cycle
what is next, and
how fast the cycle is operating.

It is referred to as "getting tomorrow's paper today" (copyrighted)

This stuff deos not appear by magic it comes from doing SA.

The commodites trading just drops out from the SA by putting a new market in the SA grinder and getting a trading set up with all the bells and whistles. I have posted what the CRT screen looks like for the automated mechnical trading system for doing SCT ( seamless continuous trading). There are thirty three pages of 8 1/2 by 11 flow charts. It turns out that using a pair of crt's and a set up gives you a "sports memory" personal approach that is more fun and effective because of how the mind works when properly programmed by experience and learning.

Experience and learning is transferable in a short time and people who have it can do just about anything in the world that they want to. I certainly do.
 
Quote from kubilai:

Thank you, Jack, for taking the time and pain to share your views.

Why is it so important to remove my starting capital and trade with early profit only? What do I do with the starting capital? Sock it away in a Swiss bank account or spend/enjoy it?
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Swiss banks are fun. I used cashier window 29 and was recognized automatically as herr doktor hershey visually. UBS mainoffice on bahnhoffstrasse in zurich.

There is a psychology involved in trading by using your senses and mind. The oppiste path from the failure path is greatly enhanced by knowing that you cannot lose money as a beginning trader or at any time later as you grow to be intermediate and expert and as you are trading accounts at the maximum allowable level of the system you use. Being in a place where you cannot lose money is a place wher your mind can explore and evlove without restriction. you can test for the truth all the time. You can know how to know because you can afford to know how to know.

I nice milestone. Another one occurs when you absolutely cannot remember how many times you have taken your initial capital out of the market. Initial capital is defined as the sum of everthing you ever put into the market for any reason whatsoever.

Try the milestones when you have toys that each cost over 100k and you only use them seasonally and they ave crazy upkeep requirements vis a vis safety requirements.

Teen age drunks can be expensive when it comes to repairing, if possible, their damage.

The slope of an earnings curve is measured in increments of intial capital. the mind does not make you take out the value of the time you spend in the markets for some reason.

The director of marketing once shoved a tetter in my hand one day that said what I was worth a day for my time. He and I were friends and he used my tennis court that was a few houses away from the Greenwich tennis club (rock ridge area). I was adverse for charging people money for my time since the money was not very significant.

I have been told that when a person does not have enough money, it weighs on him. having found out that having enough jobs concurrently while in college was sufficient to get through college, I did not figure out that not having money was an issue. I did restrict myself to two meals a day for nearly six years though.

Making money fast and efectively and efficiently is necessary because of the time issue. Time cannot be recovered. It is very important to not fuck time away because you only have so much of it to spend.

Thank you for the Q's What a neat sequence of considerations to run through.
 
Your central message, I think, is of freeing the mind and the commitment to always learning. This is of course applicable to every aspect of life.

The signifcant exchanges you had with ET members in this thread appear to be focused on unchaining the mind. FuturesTrader71 was perhaps chained by his focus on the "don'ts" (not important), which does not show what to do (important). Focusing on the negative often ends one there. AC was perhaps chained by his "predictions", because it shows ego involvement and an attempt at outsmarting the market. That was his trap. The strong focus on "edge" can also be a mind trap because it overwhelms the importance of the learning process. All those trading myths can shift one's focus away from what is essential. You obviously enjoy flipping a lot of trading "principles" on their head, to get people to think critically and break out of them.

I'm out of questions to fire at you for now, thank you again and hope you stick around this forum.
 
Thanks FuturesTrader, coolweb and illiquid for your insights. They are very relevant issues for a trader. Some of them I've learned over time the others I will take, digest and hopefully be able to use to improve my trading.

Reading up on the posts made, I cant help but wonder if it's just me or are others unable to comprehend Grob's comments. I pretty sure that I'm not as smart nor even close to being a successul trader like Grob (quite far from it I believe), but it saddens me to know that I'm not intelligent enough to even understand what he is trying to say when posting comments to try and explain things to others.

This for me is sad, because, he seems to be very well versed on the markets and very intelligent. I'd believe that he is likewise a very successful trader since he runs quite a few accounts.

However, Grob's posts seem to me more like an attempt to show off his intelligence through the use of vague and technical terms rather than help others through the use of simple explanation. And whenever he puts things simply, its like there are a million things to consider in the trade such that his entry or reasoning cannot be wrong since one or the other setup, support, resistance, etc will explain what happens. But I've noticed from my little experience in trading is that simplicity it key, otherwise, you confuse yourself as to when an setup/exit is valid or not. Then again, this is probably just because my IQ isnt even close to Grob's.

FWIW, I'm just saddened because Grob has so much to offer and can help a lot of us traders that are still learning and trying to get better. But I guess this will only happen if he is 'willing' to do so.
 
Jack, I am struck speechless by your unaccustomed loquacity. Pray do continue. Regards, Al.

(But if you need a kickstart, I reiterate that the way to approach the markets is to try to understand seemingly anomalous behaviors, then figure out how to exploit them. An example from my stock trading days. I was casually watching BA one afternoon, and saw a long stop gunning which lasted a few seconds. The anomaly was "Why the hell is that happening in the quiet part of the day?". Naturally I bought. Two minutes later Boeing made a "surprise" announcement of a large order. Analogous things happen all day in the index futures. Your methods may or may not capture such things.)
 
arzoo,

You are speaking about a veteran trader that has traded for more than 50 years. I would expect that this industry as others would give a little more respect.

Did it occur to you that to break down barriers and to get you to think, might be the purpose. Grob can speak very plainly, but YOU need to struggle, and to try, and to work on it, to understand and make it your own.

Michael B.

However, Grob's posts seem to me more like an attempt to show off his intelligence through the use of vague and technical terms rather than help others through the use of simple explanation.
 
I think when the trader takes on a reactive approach with an "always in" methodology, is the beginning to understanding Jack. (hint: let the market take you into a trade)

I would never speak for Jack, but when I understood these two simple truths, it helped me immensely to understand more about the market and how I wish to be efficient.

By the way "wash" trades are one of three possibilities...:) Don't be afraid to take em' while the market decides the direction for you.

(I hope my spelling is correct, but does it really matter? It's the thought that counts)


Michael B.
 
Quote from arzoo:.....However, Grob's posts seem to me more like an attempt to show off his intelligence through the use of vague and technical terms rather than help others through the use of simple explanation. And whenever he puts things simply, its like there are a million things to consider in the trade such that his entry or reasoning cannot be wrong since one or the other setup, support, resistance, etc will explain what happens. But I've noticed from my little experience in trading is that simplicity it key, otherwise, you confuse yourself as to when an setup/exit is valid or not. Then again, this is probably just because my IQ isnt even close to Grob's......
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Has nothing to do with your IQ. In fact, I'd say you've got things figured out really well. Good trading is simple.
 
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52450&perpage=1&pagenumber=19

Reading Grob's posts, it's clear that he had very different experiences from most of us, and thinks very differently too, thus the different communication style. It has little to do with IQ.

I had to try very hard to understand him, and only understand maybe 50% at best. The value in trying, IMHO, is that it gives me a glimpse of his thought processes that's very far out of my own comfort zone. Isn't that all learning is about? You can't learn if you stay in the comfort zone of your existing ability to understand and your existing beliefs.
 
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