Kooks of the trading world?

[ironchef]

They were manually enter trading data in charts during the day. They hired lots of clerks to do that. The quotes in the trading pits were manually given to clerks who use the erasure to make changes in price.

literally the charts were manually drawn by hand
and the guy read the ticker tape manually.

people prior to the 70's were doing taxes with pen and paper and abacus calculations on paper and no calculators.

After abacus, mechanical calculator, then TI, HP, then Wang. Those were the good old days.

A good friend, who traded options in the 70s, said it was much easier to make money on options then if you knew some maths and understood arbitrage.

 

[panzerman]

Ehler has to be up there - applying DSP (Digital Sound Processing) algorithgms to market data to magic his way to a set of prophetic indicators.

The book "Cybernetic Analysis for Stocks and Futures" is a must for any trading nerd.

The upside to Ehlers' work is that he tries to apply well understood science and engineering principles to market analysis. The downside (as some see it), anything from the world of physics applied to finance data is a misapplication of the physics.

Ehlers models market data as a complex waveform with lots of additive noise, pink noise to be more specific. How well does the model fit reality? That is for you to decide.

 

[DarthSidious]

Currently, the most successful trader that is still alive and utilizing variety of clever edges, and obviously worth following, is Dave Portnoy.

You sure about that?
https://www.businessinsider.com/bar...ve-portnoy-tries-day-trading-and-loses-2020-4

Put $3m in etrade a/c, loses $647k promptly. Hell, I trade better than that well, not much better but then not asking anyone to follow me

 

[guru]

You sure about that?
https://www.businessinsider.com/bar...ve-portnoy-tries-day-trading-and-loses-2020-4

Put $3m in etrade a/c, loses $647k promptly. Hell, I trade better than that well, not much better but then not asking anyone to follow me

Well, don't know about that, but in his own works, it took him only 3 weeks to become the #1 day trader in the country. Who else can claim such a feat?
And who else had even come close to accomplishing everything He did?!
I'm sure his 1.3 million Twitter followers can vouch for every one of his accomplishments, including those he hasn't accomplished yet.

 

[reinghar]

Well, don't know about that, but in his own works, it took him only 3 weeks to become the #1 day trader in the country. Who else can claim such a feat?
And who else had even come close to accomplishing everything He did?!
I'm sure his 1.3 million Twitter followers can vouch for every one of his accomplishments, including those he hasn't accomplished yet.

View attachment 227973

Doesn't it feel like his most important skill isn't trading, but publicity?

 

[reinghar]

The upside to Ehlers' work is that he tries to apply well understood science and engineering principles to market analysis. The downside (as some see it), anything from the world of physics applied to finance data is a misapplication of the physics.

Ehlers models market data as a complex waveform with lots of additive noise, pink noise to be more specific. How well does the model fit reality? That is for you to decide.

I have been suckered in by the really clean scientific idea that you could apply mathematical models to finance, but I'm typically disappointed in practice.

Although I feel like the Fourier transform would have merit, it would have to detect signals that are accelerating / decelerating. We don't seem to have signals that are stable in the same way as a radio signal would be. I'm not clear on if this is possible with the mathematics we have today, but I'm sure that's a limitation of my education, so I'd be happy to be enlightened.

 

[reinghar]

They were manually enter trading data in charts during the day. They hired lots of clerks to do that. The quotes in the trading pits were manually given to clerks who use the erasure to make changes in price.

literally the charts were manually drawn by hand
and the guy read the ticker tape manually.

people prior to the 70's were doing taxes with pen and paper and abacus calculations on paper and no calculators.

It almost feels like the practice of charting by hand would be useful for increasing your feel for the market somehow.

 

[guru]

Doesn't it feel like his most important skill isn't trading, but publicity?

Not at all, no one would follow him if he didn’t provide amazing value either. But his followers have sense of humor so it’s definitely not for you.

 

[DarthSidious]

Well, don't know about that, but in his own works, it took him only 3 weeks to become the #1 day trader in the country. Who else can claim such a feat?

No shit

 

[ph1l]

I have been suckered in by the really clean scientific idea that you could apply mathematical models to finance, but I'm typically disappointed in practice.

Although I feel like the Fourier transform would have merit, it would have to detect signals that are accelerating / decelerating. We don't seem to have signals that are stable in the same way as a radio signal would be. I'm not clear on if this is possible with the mathematics we have today, but I'm sure that's a limitation of my education, so I'd be happy to be enlightened.

The Hilbert-Huang transform (empirical mode decomposition followed by Hilbert transform) is something you might want to investigate.

Here is a good overview:
Lecture 12-13 Hilbert-Huang Transform
https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/sp14/cse291-b/notes/HHT.pdf

And for more details