The ACD Method

Quote from Maverick74:

I ask myself this every day to make sure I'm not being "fooled by randomness". When you put a lot of time into something, you don't want to find out down the road that you just got "lucky" or you were the benefactor of a certain environment. You want to know you have something real to lean on.

It's like getting married right. You date a girl, you get engaged, you start getting a little nervous about the "till death do you part" stuff. You are pretty sure she is the right one, but not 100% positive. You don't want to spend the rest of your life committed to the wrong girl.

So I spend some time thinking about my results and what drove those results. I have seen ACD battle tested in enough market environments and with enough products to know there is something real there. That there is a quantifiable edge. It has taken a lot of years, but it's there. Taleb makes a great point that most people attribute success in life to talent when in reality, most people are just lucky. Lucky in marriage, lucky in health, lucky in friends and lucky in trading. It does bruise the ego a bit, but it's mostly true.

We all have luck to some degree. I ask myself constantly though to what degree luck is playing in my trading. It's really anyone's guess.

Thanks Mav,

I appreciate your answer on this.
 
Dr. J just tweeted that Fisher is going to be on the half time report. Maybe an update on the 2012 trade he outlined last time?
 
Just a comment from my personal experiences.

I don't trade full time, nor at a prop. My expectations reflect this. I won't make millions, I don't expect to. I do expect a decent return from my time & energy. I do make money equivalent to the time and energy invested in trading.

I work 24 hour shifts, 8 or 9 a month. That average 49 hours per week over the year. Also own a property management business with 3 other partners. Also own a cash flowing rental.

Point is that I put in the time to make these efforts successful. I get the success that I expect given what I put in to it.

Attempted to fun a friends % family commodity pool years ago. We failed because we couldn't put in enough time & energy (licenses, taxes, audits, compliance, regulations, etc - all in addition to actually trading the account).

I guess my point is that you may be "successful" putting in a few hours a week trading, provided your measurement of success is realistic.
 
Quote from Quon:

Dr. J just tweeted that Fisher is going to be on the half time report. Maybe an update on the 2012 trade he outlined last time?

Thanks for the heads up Quon!
 
Quote from Quon:

Dr. J just tweeted that Fisher is going to be on the half time report. Maybe an update on the 2012 trade he outlined last time?

Fisher talking spreads!!!
 
I would say it is the red queen effect.
It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.
The longevity of an edge seems to be proportional to
the size of the barrier of entry to it.
To stay at the top you need to either be among the first to uncover
and exploit new edges as they become available and old ones expire.
Or you need to expend considerable resources and develop
the expertise required to access a high barrier of entry edge.
The entrenched players will not look kindly on you trying to eat
some of their lunch.

Quote from Maverick74:

I understand this works for you with your limited amount of data points. But let me play devil's advocate. Let's say you are making a meaningful return doing this. Hell, any positive return above the risk free interest rate. Why would any hedge fund or prop firm spend millions of hours working at this if they could run a 3 hour a day 5 day a week operation and generate edge?

This is not directed at you personally. I always ask guys this as a way to think about what they are doing. I use to ask guys who told me they would make 50% a year trading iron condors why no hedge funds or investment banks trade them and make 50% a year. Why do they hire 1000's of quants to make 12% a year if making 50% a year is so easy trading condors. I never would get an answer.

I know a lot of guys in this business that don't know what their kids and wife look like because they work so hard trying to eek out a few extra basis pts a year. If one could trade 3 hours a day and generate some edge, I would think most if not the entire industry would do it. Just something to think about. I ask myself this question all the time.
 
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