Socrates Examines Technical Strategy

Quote from Socrates:

My my! Where are the impassioned defenses of the verity of high profit potential from "pool extraction"?

Maybe my counterargument was too subtle. Let me restate it bluntly:

Limit order traders in the ensemble will not LET market order traders in the ensemble extract net profits because they'd go out of business if they did. So if they detect a widely used profitable strategy they MUST frustrate it. He who has the gold makes the rules.
This begs the question that this so-called system is profitable in the first place. If not, who's to bitch? Those who trade the limit or those who trade the market order?
 
Quote from Socrates:

Not to hog the posting, but IMO there ARE unique elements in SCT:
  • use of orthodox concepts that are claimed to be unorthodox
  • the aggressive claim of profit potentials of several multiples of the daily range
  • the belief that YM leads ES
  • trading all countertrend legs at high trading skill levels
  • esoteric interpretations of volume patterns
  • a whole new vocabulary to replace what's in the literature
  • the odd notion that trading acumen is enhanced by development of good character
  • paying it forward by mentoring and charity
  • exceptional cult of personality fostered by unbelievably impenetrable turbid/turgid prose.

The best I can think of to say is that Jack apparently wants to be paid by adoration instead of money. Me, in my life I have always enjoyed taking an incredible amount of abuse for good pay.

P.S.: Still waiting for that quantitative defense of "pool extraction". Apparently they can't abide even the tiniest crack in their orthodoxy. St. Jack says it, so it must be true.
You have presented an excellent soliloquy on the most salient points of SCT idiocy.

Your namesake would be proud.

P.S. I mean what I said. I really, really do. :cool:
 
Since I am meta-commenting NLP fashion on the "Technical Strategy" thread, I thought this post by Neoxx there deserved quoting:

"The parallel threads that have sprouted since the inception of this journey have not escaped my notice.
I merely choose not to gape, like a fickle magpie, at every bauble lying in the ditch.
Infiltrators, assailing the unassailable with wave after wave of changing faces, beating their heads against the wall with the seething fervour of a religious jihhad.
For theirs is a stunted world view, possibilities bounded at the breadline. Consumed by envy and fear, they hide their blindness behind veils as grotesque as they are shallow to bandy platitudes and recite their undying diatribes. Persona non grata, forever consigned to a reality of their own choosing, bleak and barren and eternally begrudging.
I afford them a fleeting indulgence, before erasing their irrelevance from my reality. Yet cockroaches and politicians survive the nuclear winter, to plague afresh under different guises.
Meanwhile, far more sinister is the ubiquitous spectre of conventional wisdom, that rears its head in even the unlikeliest of places, like a tumour gripping tightly from within.
The real cost of repeated failure becomes self evident.
I have been far from a model student, and this is just a chronicle of my journey. It is a measure of the teacher that he continued in spite of the odds, and did not seek another better suited and unencumbered, more direct, purposeful and less prone to flights of fancy.
It is my hope that every pitfall I so readily succumbed to can provide a lesson for future students and that this will become a valuable resource, providing a distillation of Jack’s wisdom. My charts should represent a cohesive amalgam of Jack and Spyders’ teachings, and in their consistency and continuity, may invite other open minds to begin a journey of their own."


So many things I could say, but I shall confine myself to this recitation of the "sinister ubiquitous spectre of the conventional wisdom":

- Fib retraces
- Fib extensions
- EMA's
- HOD/LOD tests
- exhaustion
- breakouts
- wedges

Those are indeed insidiously invidious, hahaha! I feel deliciously unrepentently evil using them!
 
Quote from schizo:

This begs the question that this so-called system is profitable in the first place. If not, who's to bitch?
Ah, another pointed question (which shall go unanswered) for those who swear fealty to the pedagogues of SCT Fantasy Trading.

Prove their profitability?

No, no, a thousand times NO they say!

They'd rather:
  • post their fake paper-trades (with 40 countracts no less),
  • put their head in the sand and keep going down the road of fantasy,
  • and log-on to Elite Trader with a plethora of sock-puppt aliases to argue and insult those of us who seek the truth.
  • use trollish moderators to censor, delete and re-write posts which call into question even the hint of profitability, much less the creation of streams of "pool extraction" (LOL)

That is the only proof I need, thank you very much. :eek: :p

P.S. I've just described Neoxx and his Technical Fantasy journal to the tee!
 
Following up to what MBS said, there is a curious phenomenon in trading. People desperately want to become traders to be financially independent. Yet they willing give up every shred of independence in submission to the guru who promises them independence!
 
A true guru (like me) will teach you how to THINK about trading, without EVER giving you a single trading system. (Actually I am thinking of Mark Douglas' two fine books.) Give a fish or teach to fish.
 
Quote from Socrates:

Apologies, Ehorn. I was hoping for a succinct summary of SCT principles by an independent practitioner, not references to Jack's long-winded and elusive presentations.

You might have noticed that many of us skeptics are fond of simple systems, or at least clearcut numerical rules. For example, I trade about 20 systems which take about 1300 lines collectively to code. So with an average of 60 lines per system, they clearly are simple. Indeed, the most powerful of them takes only 20 lines.

I personally believe that SCT can be expressed by very simple rules, but Jack tends to embellish the system whenever challenged, so that the current practice of it is IMO bloated.

I too am fond of simple (and profitable) techniques. My most recent chart contained roughly 80 lines (if you consider crayons to be code) and generated 2 signals for the day which yielded the offer. My code and logic by no means expose the limits of SCT but rather a comfortable place to persist for a time while one becomes acclimated.

I do agree that SCT can be expressed using very simple rules to and by some and also that it can appear bloated to and by others.

One final observation - I am not surprised to see this thread take the anticipated route as many which have preceeded, so I will diminish and leave you to continue your "examination". I anticipate it will result in a similar outcome as previous attempts.

WMCN
 
Thanks for participating. If by simplicity you refer to the use of channels alone, I am with you. I run turning points code in 40 lines that I could easily make to draw channels explicitly if I thought it added much value. The reason threads like these always come to a sorry end is that SCT adherents will not dialogue quantitatively. Witness my challenge to "pool extraction". A pity. I have ES charts loaded and ready to generate examples. You can see how otherwise quite mild posters like MBS go rabidly ballistic on SCT's illogic and cult of personality.
 
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