Something very simplistic
- Thread starter Quah
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Damn that Quah. He goes and posts a method that might not always work. And to add insult to injury, he flatly refuses to improve upon it.
All the damn thing does is make money. What am I and all the rest to do if the markets change, and it stops working.
If Quah had an ounce of decency in him, he would post a method that is without flaws, and guaranteed to work perfectly forever.
Banish the man, and delete the thread - that's what I say!
All the damn thing does is make money. What am I and all the rest to do if the markets change, and it stops working.
If Quah had an ounce of decency in him, he would post a method that is without flaws, and guaranteed to work perfectly forever.
Banish the man, and delete the thread - that's what I say!
Tampa, I don't ever recall criticizing quah's system for having losses, my example of a tripled up trade getting stopped out twice was just getting him to anticipate that possibility, and perhaps address that issue before it happens. Any system could use a bit of foresight that would catch any pitfalls that backtesting probably won't find: i.e, if you make a living selling naked puts and calls, you'd better plan for contingincies even if you've been 100% profitable so far-- same idea here.
Quah's results seem to be plenty profitable, but like I said I'm not interested in net profits since I don't plan on trading the same way, so my suggestion was to look for ways to maximize his edge, something I'm always on the lookout for in my own trading. Do you actually read the posts or just assume I'm pissing in his face since it lets you join in on the cheerleading?
Quah's results seem to be plenty profitable, but like I said I'm not interested in net profits since I don't plan on trading the same way, so my suggestion was to look for ways to maximize his edge, something I'm always on the lookout for in my own trading. Do you actually read the posts or just assume I'm pissing in his face since it lets you join in on the cheerleading?
Though it may have been unintentional, the impression you've given is that Quah's system has no value because he can't explain exactly why it works, and that, at bottom, is your problem and not Quah's.
I, for one, don't think it's Quah's responsibility to determine why his system works (at least for the time being), much less explain it to somebody else. If somebody else wants to do so in order to apply features of it to his own trading, then report the results of that application, great. But having read all these posts from the beginning, it seems to me that quite a few people are upset by this system - if not downright enraged by it - because it's so simple. This implies that all their efforts to analyze to the nth degree have, in effect, been a waste of time.
At this point, it's difficult to believe that people have been playing with this system for only a few days, not weeks or months. Therefore, the almost visceral responses that the thread has evoked most likely have been motivated by something that has nothing to do with the system or with Quah, who, I might add, has been a model of tolerance, patience and courtesy.
Those of us who are interested are all playing with this system and adapting it to our own trading styles, but there's nothing to report yet as the system has been in use for so little time. It cannot be backtested but must rather be tested in realtime and forward, and that takes a while. So those who are irritated by the whole discussion and who also have no patience are presented with a problem.
--Db
I've said it a few times, the discussion doesn't necessarily involve Quah since the profits are his end point and he is the only one that can trade exactly like he does -- for the rest of us, it's the discussion on how the system helps our own trading which is worth any while.
In his first posts Quah presented a fibonacci-based entry system for which "any indicator will do, doesn't really matter, you can even use opposing signals, etc". Now imagine if a whole bunch of traders tried to apply this timing method to whichever indicator they prefer. You could probably categorize the results into 5 groups:
1. Increased profitability.
2. Decreased profitability.
3. Increased unprofitability.
4. Decreased unprofitability.
5. No effective change.
Now let's imagine 2 unprofitable traders who've been using the exact same indicator decide to add on this new timing factor: one manages to cut his losses in half, while the other doubles his losses. Is it enough to just say shrug, worked for this guy, didn't work for this other guy, that's just the way it is? What if you found out that the first trader usually made 20 trades per day, and the second one made only 6, and both were now making 12 apiece? Wouldn't that give a clue that for these 2 traders, it's the indicator which is the problem and that the less it is traded on average, the more money they will keep? Whereas if you just looked at net change in losses, one would swear by how well he's "improving" while the other dismisses it as crap.
My point is that other traders are trying to implement changes to their own trading, so everyone is starting out from a different place. To just call out "helped me" "didn't help me" in a roll call really doesn't reveal much at all. Instead, you can save alot of time by saying "this timing system will raise (or lower, depending upon how one used to trade) the frequency of my trades during volatile opening period during the day while lowering my rate of trading as the day goes on -- is that an edge for my trading?"
I suggested to Quah earlier that if his system favors liquid times with higher momentum, that he should try out a sequence of trades to capitalize on the close as well. Whether it helps or not, or if it's even worth bothering to find out are up to Quah himself, but whatever Quah manages to notice in making changes and discussing them would help me out, if not anyone else.
In his first posts Quah presented a fibonacci-based entry system for which "any indicator will do, doesn't really matter, you can even use opposing signals, etc". Now imagine if a whole bunch of traders tried to apply this timing method to whichever indicator they prefer. You could probably categorize the results into 5 groups:
1. Increased profitability.
2. Decreased profitability.
3. Increased unprofitability.
4. Decreased unprofitability.
5. No effective change.
Now let's imagine 2 unprofitable traders who've been using the exact same indicator decide to add on this new timing factor: one manages to cut his losses in half, while the other doubles his losses. Is it enough to just say shrug, worked for this guy, didn't work for this other guy, that's just the way it is? What if you found out that the first trader usually made 20 trades per day, and the second one made only 6, and both were now making 12 apiece? Wouldn't that give a clue that for these 2 traders, it's the indicator which is the problem and that the less it is traded on average, the more money they will keep? Whereas if you just looked at net change in losses, one would swear by how well he's "improving" while the other dismisses it as crap.
My point is that other traders are trying to implement changes to their own trading, so everyone is starting out from a different place. To just call out "helped me" "didn't help me" in a roll call really doesn't reveal much at all. Instead, you can save alot of time by saying "this timing system will raise (or lower, depending upon how one used to trade) the frequency of my trades during volatile opening period during the day while lowering my rate of trading as the day goes on -- is that an edge for my trading?"
I suggested to Quah earlier that if his system favors liquid times with higher momentum, that he should try out a sequence of trades to capitalize on the close as well. Whether it helps or not, or if it's even worth bothering to find out are up to Quah himself, but whatever Quah manages to notice in making changes and discussing them would help me out, if not anyone else.
I enjoy the critical posting. I find many of illiquidâs comments to be intelligent, illuminating, and worthy of discussion. Both Quah and illiquid have conducted themselves respectably and stated their cases quite well, IMO. Unfortunatley, many of the other posts on this thread have only served to polarize the issues through the use of extreme statements.
I haven't gotten that impression.
I wrote a little program to give you heads up on when the next fib time is coming.
It is based on your system clock, so you must set it to EST time zone, and sync it to an atomic clock, using a program like:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?1000000034325
You can download FibTimer here:
http://members.shaw.ca/TradeExecutor/releases/Timer.exe
It is based on your system clock, so you must set it to EST time zone, and sync it to an atomic clock, using a program like:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?1000000034325
You can download FibTimer here:
http://members.shaw.ca/TradeExecutor/releases/Timer.exe
Why not? As long as each is specific about what he did and when he did it, as Quah has been, why is it necessary that he explain why he got the results he did? What difference does it make?
Personally, I'd like to see "a whole bunch" do just that, try out this idea with a variety of indicators in a variety of timeframes with a variety of stops and price targets, etc. Isn't that the point of a group effort, to try all this out and report the results? And if someone can't explain exactly why he got the results he did, I don't much care. Nobody really knows why they get any of the results they get anyway. If they did, then two people doing exactly the same thing exactly the same way would get exactly the same results. And they don't. If they did, then everybody would be trading the same system. They'd be crazy not to.
--Db
i find illiquid's points, criticisms and comments right on the money. I agree with everything that he has said to date and i don't find him to be argumentative in the least. he has been nothing but completely reasonable in his analysis of Quah's 'system". He is asking all the right questions.
I have a question for quah and please forgive me if you've already answered this but i didn't see it after reading the last 60 pages:
Why did you choose fib #'s for your entries? How did you decide that this is how you wanted to enter the trades? Why fib #'s??
oh btw, illiquid is also right when he says that this system has NOT been found to be profitable yet, a weeks worth of winning trades is not proof of its efficacy.
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