Market's gotta be rigged

Anek,

It wasn't my intention to criticize the method so my bad if it came off that way. I've studied the behavior of price for a good many years and I did a statistical study on patterns and what I found is the uncertainty about which way the price would move and the variety of ways you could approach the method made it a losing strategy. But, if you showed me a track record of generating consistent results doing it I wouldn't be all that surprised. Stock car drivers all drive the same car but somehow, someway, one guy manages to rise to the top. If you put 20 traders on the same pattern over and over someone would find a way. That person just wouldn't be me.

I just felt the probability of that method was low but someone can probably exploit it.

Quote from Anekdoten:

I know he does but it's obvious he could not get trend and patterns to work for him because of the way he criticizes the methodology.

Anek
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interesting thread. learning to trade i racked my brains trying dozens of different patterns and looking at thousands of charts. i thought very rigidly about the patterns when i first started out and i used to get smoked very frequently. as i began to think more flexibly about the patterns they began to lose their usefulness (that could be a head and shoulders top or a consolidation before a continuation...). at this point i gave up on charting, began to focus on the fundamentals and started taking longer term positions. i rarely reference charts now other than to make sure the price action is confirming my fundamental view. the realisation that i could not predict the future based on the charts took a great deal of stress out of my trading experience.

asp
 
CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE MARKET ARE RIGGED AT TIMES...XMAS always magically moves the market up on no volume.The last hour of trading day,especially last 20 mins, sees wild price fluctuations without news.That is why i dont trade holidays or last hour.The market open also has bizarre action but i dont mind going long when they smash a stock on the open because i have the whole day to get out.

Friday market was up 200+ but zero pullback almost nor volatility.Monday it goes up 100 with similar action....On friday T was up 80 cents it refused to pullback most of the day which is very unusual then in the last hour it moves up another 35 cents on air and hangs for about 10 mins then with 25 mins left it sells off 45 cents suddenly and with a few minutes left rallies back up 25 cents....I dont play markets in the last hour because there is so much volatility that is def controlled by MM's.This happens on opens as well without rhyme or reason.And i am talking about dow 30 stocks....I have seen MO open down 50 cents then rally then just fall 2.50 with no news and no bids,nor sellers and then rally up 3 pts(this happened to me in june 07)...

I am not a market expert just an observer and active participant...I dont care if it is rigged like this but it seems obvious.Also as long as i can make money off it then so be it...Like i say i just dont trade holidays or the last hour cuz that action defies explanation.

I will start trading next week,its been tough to stay away for the last 5 trading days but i would have been tempted to short and gotten screwed.
The market should be active as earnings start to come out in january...Should be interesting month....
 
Quote from risktaker:

Don,

Could you give people an idea of the type of training you guys give new traders nowadays?

What "non-directional" trading/training do you offer your traders, for example, and who's teaching these techniques and what rate of success are they achieving?

Thanks!
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Sure, here's a note from our website.


Please Read This: What separates our training from the "pack" of nonsense presented to the public? It takes, in general, over a $million to make a decent living in this business. Most "gurus" and "experts" try to convince the unwary that they can take $20,000 and make a bunch of money in the markets. Well, that's nearly impossible. Our traders have a big edge over retail customers because they can "use" (not "abuse") a $million or more of our capital by funding their account with around $20,000 or so. This available capital doesn't mean you simply "buy more shares" or anything like that (although, you can as your comfort level increases). What this does mean is that YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN STRATEGIES THAT ACTUALLY WORK VS. "Picking a Stock's direction" or "Picking the overall direction of the market." Much of what we teach can be adapted to retail trading, but not all of it for some of the reasons shown.

Our traders can take part in market making, position trading, pairs trading (collecting interest on the money generated when you sell stock short, where most, if not all, retail brokers do not pay you that interest). We can place "Opening Only Orders" with the NYSE, pre-market, so we can take part WITH THE NYSE SPECIALISTS when stocks gap up or down each morning. We can use automated programs without fear of "margin calls" etc. I could go on and on, but I think you get my point.


Since our traders receive full interest on their short stock sales, they can engage in long/short strategies that most retail traders cannot (as an example).

Happy New Year!

Don
 
Follow up live trading boot camp.


This all new 2 to 4 week intensive trading program is designed to speed up your learning curve. You can choose to take the first 2 weeks or stay the entire 4 weeks of intense mentoring. It can take 12 months or longer to get to a level of comfort in your trading skills. We offer 2 to 4 weeks of regimented, scalable, structured training to help you get to this comfort level more quickly. Boot camp starts January 22, 2008. The 3 day course is a prerequisite.
PLEASE - Plan ahead, get paperwork filed. Call Don for details.

Here is a partial outline of topics covered:

Week One: Introduction, desk assignments, user I.D., New Trader
orientation, set up Redi layout. Introduction to "spoo" charts, quote windows, message fields, and other hardware and software. Practice entering orders, under supervision and control. Pick stocks for opening only trading, prepare pre-opening calculations, begin live trading. Setting up your CAS system (Goldman Sachs sheets).

Week Two: Pick our "children" stocks, evaluate fundamentals, choose proper peers, review technical aspects. Observe and listen to live tape-reading, all encompassing (including FV, Prem, Disc, size, New York open book, Level 2, etc.) market analysis to determine entry and exit points. Outside enveloping, "trade throughs", and other live trading manipulatives.
NEW: Introduction to live Pairs Trading. Practice - Practice - Practice. We have mid way evaluations this week. Listen to verbal narratives, observe instructors trading while learning additional trading strategies. Prepare Trading Plan, using peer analysis, business projections, and other longer term planning techniques.
"Bright Bands" and volatility movements with Bob Bright. Following duck lists, one-on-one training with instructor's available in week 3 and 4. Introduction to CAS system. Pairs trading, including correlated, quantitative, and "crutch" methods. Review with each trader individually. Address specific concerns based on reviews.

Additional Weeks if so desired...learning never stops!
Feel free to stay in the Las Vegas office for as long as you like.


There's more of course, but I think this is adequate for a year end "plug" LOL.

www.stocktrading.com/training.html

All the best,

Don
 
Quote from ProfitTakgFool:
A quick synopsis of my strategy
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Thanks for the reply. I'll check out the links to your other posts to see if I can get a sense of your entries.
 
You just figured out that the market was rigged? The markets these days are nothing compared to Livermore's days and days of yore, where the markets were made to move, not taking any natural course.

In fact, when the markets are rigged, they are more easily predicted, because the people doing the rigging will usually show their hand at the beginning and you can ride their coattails for gains. The question is, can you identify it when the rigging begins?
 
Profit,

No harm done at all.

There are multiple ways to squeeze a pretty penny from the market we just have to find a system that works and is appropriate for our own personal psychology.

Anek
 
Quote from Don Bright:

Sure, here's a note from our website.

It takes, in general, over a $million to make a decent living in this business. Most "gurus" and "experts" try to convince the unwary that they can take $20,000 and make a bunch of money in the markets. Well, that's nearly impossible. Don
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Hi Don

Interesting post. Given that there are a lot of traders here on ET that make a living trading and sweep their accounts so that they never have anything approaching $1MM in play at any time, I am a bit surprised by this comment.

In my opinion, the gurus and experts are here (and elsewhere) trying to convince the unwary that a) it's easy to take $20,000 and make living and, in a related note, b) the unwary can make a living by paying the guru a smaller amount of money for a 'system', or possibly for the privilege of entering a chat room where the guru makes a bunch of generalized comments about the markets and uses ridiculous stops to show that as long as you stay in a trade it will eventually go your way.

I have to say that although I have never found your posts here to be overly optimistic about BT or anywhere near as snake-oily as the usual crowd of hypesters, I disagree with the comment quoted above. I'm sure you're familiar with the Market Wizards books, in which many of the traders describe how they took tiny amounts of capital and created big accounts. Many of them blew out several times, of course.

Are we all Market Wizards? Of course not. But to say that it's 'nearly impossible' to take $20,000 and make a living (in a few years, let's say) is, to me, just not true. Unlikely, yes, but that has nothing to do with the 'opportunity potential' in the markets. It has everything to do with psychology. That's the reason people who start with $20,000 won't make it, and in my opinion it has zero to do with the fact that $20,000 isn't $1MM. If everyone had the right mindset, there would be no need to enter the markets with $1MM. I hope I am making myself clear here. It is not nearly impossible to make a living with a $20,000 account because it's not a $1MM account, it is nearly impossible because people don't have the right approach.

Is it easier to make money using BT strategies? Probably for some it is, for others it may not be.

You see what I do, I'm sure - newbs open an account with no plan, no research, no clue that the training period for this will be counted in years for many, and then they blow out.

Anyhow Don, not a flame at all, I have enjoyed reading your posts here over the years and you have given out a ton of good advice and hints for free. I just had to comment about this one.

Take care

Nik
 
it is not EASY, but a trader can make a good living from 4-6 contracts.


a decent trader should be able to average 20 pts a day in YM, which gives a decent income stream.

personally, i sweep profits at least once a week.

i also have income coming from dividends, bonds, commodities, money market, etc. but a GOOD trader does not need anywhere NEAR the amount suggested to make a living from futures.

however, based on what i have seen mentoring, and monitoring chatrooms and websites - good futures traders are rare.
 
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