Quote from William Rennick:
Dear HGTRADER,
First off I'd like to say thanks for your analysis of the "Balls" calls. I truely found it most interesting. Your conclusions though don't jibe with reality. I guess just like everything else in life it's all how you spin it. The main reason I think you conclusion of 57% accuracy is way off base is that you are making assumptions of profitability by looking at the chart. Profitabilty is based on many things, most importantly on a traders skill.
Ok, lets say your right about assumptions and chart reading. Here is what i understand: first of all, you stated that you present the predictions here to prove to the sceptics that intraday market timing works. So then, what and where exactly is the proof. Is the proof the afternoon chart/price movements happening after your crystal ball calls are posted, there's no other information you have provided that would qualify as this proof. And yet here and now your correctly implying that the charts seen without knowing your real entry-points and exit-points and entry/exit strategies, that the charts (which tells the story best/worth a 1000 words) are way off the mark(useless) in telling the story of how successful the prediction was.
Doh, and I thought you wanted to prove market timing works, but apparently a reasonable assumption declared wrong, shows that your entry and exit timing is unknown to everyone except subscribers to "Crystal." And if we do not know your entry and exit points, we do not have proof that you did not buy long at the afternoon high, and sell out for a loss at the afternoon low.
However the magnitude of a trend, which largely determines profitabilty of a trend is almost impossible to predict. That's why my trading style is to go for a base hit, and never a homer.
ok, now I know you don't have a working set of rules, that would get you out constantly near the top of the trend.
And you sell out, upon reaching a profit of 40/50/20 points? less? more?
And that's the main reason your conclusion doesnt hold water. It is a rare day that I don't get my base hit when the "Ball" gives a directional call. If the "Ball" scores a rare miss my money management plan stops me out with a minimal loss.
about the "stop out" isn't that the exact same thing my "failed call" stats revolved around? afterall I agree with the need for an optimal drawdown limitation to trigger a sell-out of a failed trade in order to contain the threat of excessive bleeding.
A factor that you could not calculate is that the "Ball" has a 9:40 am morning call which often confirms the afternoon call and has you already into a trade from a better entry point. However, those calls can't be factored in here since they arent being posted here.
This is true, but you still made the afternoon calls, and I wanted to determine their outcome, regardless whether you would have refrained from trading an afternoon directional call
Another problem is that judging accuracy of the calls is very subjective and relative. Today for instance, the "Ball" called for FLAT this afternoon,. Well that would definately seem like it should have been STRONG. Thats true maybe if you trade the dow futures, however a qqq trader, or russell trader would have made zilch making a directional trade this afternoon. So for me the FLAT call was spot on. That's the reason you really can't make profitability assumptions.
well if I had considered all movments of up to 40 points to be nonprofitable, then I would have pointed out that only 3 out of 20 of the posted calls were profitable.
To argue profitability by looking at a yahoo chart makes less sense than pro ball players argueing balls and strikes with the ump, which is why they don't allow it.
that's an awfully poor comparision to make. How about a sport with instant replay, just like the chart, the instant replay
shows the path and position of the ball(stock) in order to correct human error misjudgments and fill the reviewers blindspots in
with relevant detail that previously went unnoticed.
The ultimate measure is how a traders numbers look, and I know mine are way above what your 57% profitability assumption would produce. It's my contention that even if some traders could read tomorrows financial page today, that they would still lose their ass. Unfortunately we don't have 'Back to the Future" time travel yet, until then I'll keep using that damned Amazing Crystal Ball.
No time travel involved in examining time recorded price positions
on a chart. And no difficulty involved in determining pre-decided
stop-out levels for failing trades, with pre-decided profit taking levels for successful trades.
A now tired Rennick out
ps. BTW, of the 20 calls you reviewed in my opinion only 3 were misses, and 2 of those were negatively influenced by "breaking news".
Your documented recaps informed us about only one news event effect. I truly doubt you would have failed to mention any news
that caused failure.
Also you threw out the FLAT calls, which should be included. So by my count the "Balls" record for the 20 days you reviewed should be 16-4, vs. your tally of 8-6-6. But really all those calls don't matter, it's only the next call that counts.
So you want to pad up your score with "flat" calls counted as wins, even though everyone here knows that the flat calls don't make money.
