The best traders in ET
- Thread starter GloriaBrown
- Start date
This may also be of benefit:
- I wasted about four years trying to decipher the intent behind every move and disappeared down a number of fruitless though mildly interesting bunny tunnels. It's a natural thing to do, as the basic mechanics of trading ultimately become tedious and unfulfilling, at the very least in an intellectual sense, so of course one tries to go deeper and deeper to squeeze more meaning from the motion, indeed the profession as a whole. Or hole.
Now I'm down to one free web-based chart and have let it all go, it's such a relief. Four monitors, 85 charts with various pointless divisions of time, range and volume, bid/ask order book overlaid with pit noise, TICK, VIX, put/call open interest, A/D and TRIN. WTF? Muddies the waters innit. Anything to avoid seeing the simplicity that was always there. I suppose it's kinda hard to accept that an innocent child with the proverbial crayon would probably do the job better, especially for the inquisitive male ego "But... but ... you mean that's all I have to do? Can't be right. So let's misovercomplexify it" as Bush might say.
Notwithstanding I think basics still need to be grasped: the formations and background levels of commitment and emotion that manifest as, for instance, an even-handed fierce fight; a non-commital can't be bothered to fight; whoa that hurt and I grimly held on but now it really hurts capitulation; directional grind, whippy uncertainty etc. ... vague levels of view (or lack of it) and positioning. but beyond that I no longer care why anything is happening outside of the nebulous bigger picture. Perhaps it gets more exciting when you can see the less obvious coming, but you don't need to. Pursue another (parallel) career if you want creative rewards, enlightening explanations or a sense of having produced something whether physically or in the mysterious carapace at the top of our bodies.
Accept that for the market to work it needs to occasionally misdirect -- savagely -- often during a dull moment (biggest moves often come out of these) but that it is, yes, generally quite obvious. Draw a few simple lines, exercise patience and hit those small areas of high probability again and again. That's all we can do. Thus it must follow that battles will indeed be fought in these obvious areas, as that's where the seasoned money will always be. It cannot be any other way. Our money, playing the waiting selective game. Not their money, cause they're impulsive, impatient, clueless, adrenaline diet disciples, or so rumour has it.
--frugi
You sound like you never read research paper. Here is an important research paper result from Princeton PHD:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr4.html
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr4.pdf
It shows head and shoulder pattern has some predictive power.
What can you say now?
(GloriaBrown, JH, you can safely skip this post, you did not miss anything). To all others I propose the following idea:
have you EVER, over the course of one week, witnessed that MORE OFTEN THAN NOT (meaning, more than 50% of the times) fibonacci retracement levels have held up? I have not, not in a SINGLE asset class nor asset, NOT ONE.
Does a strategy exist, which involves in any way the RSI, which has ever shown to have an edge? (Let's say, generated more gains than losses over a few months). I have never heard of anyone using it over the course of 13 years and I have literally talked to hundreds of professional trader colleagues. There must be a reason nobody uses it.
Has anyone on this whole site recently (last couple years) run a strategy that is mostly a function of any sort of moving average (choose simple, exponential, logarithmic) and that has produced consistent profit? No, and there are countless academic papers that debunked the myth that any of this works. (I am a practitioner and not an academician but I have to give it to some of them that the methodologies how some test trading strategies become more and more elaborate and accurate, including pretty complete limit order books, tick based data, non trivial data cleansing and filtering,...). A simple google search should produce a multitude of such papers, if you really cannot find (and state why) then let me know and I point to them.
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The list could go on and on and on. My point being, that not only single TA approaches utterly failed on paper and in practice but even any combination tested (and yes not every combination may have indeed been tested) has never produced sufficient pnl profiles to consider them strategies with edge after applying transaction costs.
But maybe the most convincing argument yet to come against any of the TA hocus pocus is this:
If high profile hedge fund managers and high frequency trading houses, who really employ some of the absolute brightest and best, are not using conventional TA techniques but rather take the risk to be convicted of insider trading, why would you do??? There must be a reason they take such great risks. I mean, what is it with some who really do not grasp the logic behind this argument? It is as if someone believed in the 80s that cocaine can be smuggled into the country risk-free and that there was no reason why a kilo cost 30k usd and more. It is as if that same someone thought all those elaborate drug cartel schemes were ridiculous because it must be so easy to get the snow flakes into the US. If investment banks, hedge funds, buy side firms go to GREAT LENGTH (either through top notch technology, a host of incredibly smart quants, and the temptation to reach into the gray zone all the way into front-running or insider trading) to gain an edge in this highly competitive market. IF you can apply couple TRADING IN THE ZONE, MURPHY TA MAGIC and other BS , run an optimizer and voila comes out a strategy with edge then everyone else must be stupid right?
So, please do not tell me that what does not work for ME, may work for others, Your TA claims are stacked against the empirical evidence of hundreds of hedge funds, dozens of investment banks and another hundreds of conventional buy side firms.
Can someone stick to the topic, argue rationally and logically coherent and respond to this post? I mean without changing topic, without name calling, just a straight forward answer? I have no problem to become a convert if your counter argument makes sense.
P.S.: When I say TA, I mean each and EVERY last one of the indicators included in ANY retail software application you can think of, any and all indicators offered even by professional platforms, such as Bloomberg, Eikon, CQG, Quick, ..., basically ANYTHING that is out in the public domain (and I admit, rarely, very rarely, is there a gem to be found among newly published academic research that has not yet caught on with market practitioners).
have you EVER, over the course of one week, witnessed that MORE OFTEN THAN NOT (meaning, more than 50% of the times) fibonacci retracement levels have held up? I have not, not in a SINGLE asset class nor asset, NOT ONE.
Does a strategy exist, which involves in any way the RSI, which has ever shown to have an edge? (Let's say, generated more gains than losses over a few months). I have never heard of anyone using it over the course of 13 years and I have literally talked to hundreds of professional trader colleagues. There must be a reason nobody uses it.
Has anyone on this whole site recently (last couple years) run a strategy that is mostly a function of any sort of moving average (choose simple, exponential, logarithmic) and that has produced consistent profit? No, and there are countless academic papers that debunked the myth that any of this works. (I am a practitioner and not an academician but I have to give it to some of them that the methodologies how some test trading strategies become more and more elaborate and accurate, including pretty complete limit order books, tick based data, non trivial data cleansing and filtering,...). A simple google search should produce a multitude of such papers, if you really cannot find (and state why) then let me know and I point to them.
.
.
.
The list could go on and on and on. My point being, that not only single TA approaches utterly failed on paper and in practice but even any combination tested (and yes not every combination may have indeed been tested) has never produced sufficient pnl profiles to consider them strategies with edge after applying transaction costs.
But maybe the most convincing argument yet to come against any of the TA hocus pocus is this:
If high profile hedge fund managers and high frequency trading houses, who really employ some of the absolute brightest and best, are not using conventional TA techniques but rather take the risk to be convicted of insider trading, why would you do??? There must be a reason they take such great risks. I mean, what is it with some who really do not grasp the logic behind this argument? It is as if someone believed in the 80s that cocaine can be smuggled into the country risk-free and that there was no reason why a kilo cost 30k usd and more. It is as if that same someone thought all those elaborate drug cartel schemes were ridiculous because it must be so easy to get the snow flakes into the US. If investment banks, hedge funds, buy side firms go to GREAT LENGTH (either through top notch technology, a host of incredibly smart quants, and the temptation to reach into the gray zone all the way into front-running or insider trading) to gain an edge in this highly competitive market. IF you can apply couple TRADING IN THE ZONE, MURPHY TA MAGIC and other BS , run an optimizer and voila comes out a strategy with edge then everyone else must be stupid right?
So, please do not tell me that what does not work for ME, may work for others, Your TA claims are stacked against the empirical evidence of hundreds of hedge funds, dozens of investment banks and another hundreds of conventional buy side firms.
Can someone stick to the topic, argue rationally and logically coherent and respond to this post? I mean without changing topic, without name calling, just a straight forward answer? I have no problem to become a convert if your counter argument makes sense.
P.S.: When I say TA, I mean each and EVERY last one of the indicators included in ANY retail software application you can think of, any and all indicators offered even by professional platforms, such as Bloomberg, Eikon, CQG, Quick, ..., basically ANYTHING that is out in the public domain (and I admit, rarely, very rarely, is there a gem to be found among newly published academic research that has not yet caught on with market practitioners).
Quote from bighog:
Totally agree and will extend it a bit. There are endless combinations using BASIC-EASY simple stuff to make it in day trading.
That sentence is also the reason many do not make it.
When considering the endless combos that the mkt tosses at you every day and endless ways for price to travel to the next 30 or so tick target, no one will have a snowballs chance in hell to be CONSISTENT until they wise up and DISCARD 97% of all the ways to capture those tick targets. IT IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE to do without a solid, cut and dried method that is distilled down to the bone.
How many of you TA non believers start the day and flip-flop around in the suggestion box for an entry based on the flavor of the moment?
Think real hard and ask yourself why MANY can do it but yet so many fail.
Ok, I PROMISE.........this is last post on this subject. To tell you the truth, it hurts to read how so many non-believers of TA do not understand how to win in a losers game. The reason this is called a losers game is because it looks so easy but yet so hard because there are tons of possible ways to win and new folks try them all at once............THAT guarantees failure.
LESS IS MORE............ let that sink in. Listen to NoDoji and Jack, they might be sunbaked but are not fools.
PS: If any of you TA non-believers went to a shrink and discussed your problem of why TA does not work for you and it is sweet for others, the answer back to you would be like this: "you want something for nothing sonny, it will not happen, quit the complaining and get to work on the subject or give it a rest" Please pay the cashier for my fee, NOW SCAT!!!
I read a research report that smoking actually makes you prettier and above all, more intelligent. (vs. the other 200 reports that claim the opposite). Guess where I side?
By the way, you linked to a report from 1999 with data, used, from before 1994 and even then it was countered by many others that made a case against it.
傻逼
By the way, you linked to a report from 1999 with data, used, from before 1994 and even then it was countered by many others that made a case against it.
傻逼
In addition to this and your other comments, it should be understood that the TA true believers such as. etc MUST believe themselves to be smarter , superior to and more savvy than the 1000's of quants, academics and other professional traders who have reached the same conclusions that TA is bunk. What incredible arrogance. They even subscribe to ideas like " being on God's side" and other metaphysical advantages to their claimed market reading abilities. It's all very similar to hearing the corner psychic explain themselves. It takes 18 hours a day of study, don't seek out edge from pros and prop shops---and other strong DIY sentiments show a deep delusion and nearly religious attachment to the hind sight biased falsehoods known as TA.
I am not saying every TA work as I mentioned before. There is research paper saying there is evidence showing some TA works as you can see from my research paper reply above, and I suggest people should do their own research to find out their own answer.
It worked IN hindsight WITHOUT taking into account true costs of execution,on SELECTED assets, on data, the newest of which date back 19 years ago!!! Anything else?
And yes, of course, some TA works every now and then. The holy grail is just to predict with high certainty when it will work again next time ;-) Even my dog pointing the paws up or down is 50% right. Unfortunately that is not enough in financial trading when you take into account costs of execution. And why should anyone spend years to find out that TA does not work when ALL investment banks, hedge funds and a whole host of academic researchers have already done the job for you?
But you have not answered my question in my longer post, though I am afraid you never will because there is no logical counter argument to why you would still believe in this crap when none of the much brighter and more experienced guys do not use it.
And yes, of course, some TA works every now and then. The holy grail is just to predict with high certainty when it will work again next time ;-) Even my dog pointing the paws up or down is 50% right. Unfortunately that is not enough in financial trading when you take into account costs of execution. And why should anyone spend years to find out that TA does not work when ALL investment banks, hedge funds and a whole host of academic researchers have already done the job for you?
But you have not answered my question in my longer post, though I am afraid you never will because there is no logical counter argument to why you would still believe in this crap when none of the much brighter and more experienced guys do not use it.
Here is her updated info:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~cosler/
She has a solid CV.
What do you mean by more experienced guys do not use TA? This guys over here is too junior for you?:
Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire commodity trader, calls Prechter and Frost's standard text on Elliott "a classic," and one of "the four Bibles of the business"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle
yeah and Tudor Jones paid a fortune to have his cheesy video and other statements disappear from the surface of the earth due to embarrassment (obviously to no avail). You really come up with more and more obscure examples to defend yourself. It almost appears bizarre.