The thing about edge

Quote from ronblack:

Expectation is useless in trading unless it is stationary. If you can find a stationary positive expectation you make money. This is hard because of constant arbitrage.

Expectancy is a term coined by V. Tharp who subsequently tried to patent it I believe but did not succeed. It is defined as the expectation divided by the average loss. I cannot see any good use for this ratio except in limited cases.
Expectation doesn't have to be stationary if you use dynamic position sizing.
 
Quote from kut2k2:

Expectation doesn't have to be stationary if you use dynamic position sizing.

Expectation is the average of trade returns. If it is not stationary then I argue that the probability of having negative values is high in a mean-reverting price series.
 
Quote from Brianharvey:

An apparently successful trader told me:

''If the vast majority advocate charts and technical analysis, and 80-90% lose in the markets, wouldn't this outcome lead a rational person to suspect that something was not right? Aiming to be better than the vast majority at employing an overwhelmingly unsuccessful approach seems to me to be a strange ambition''

Nowadays nearly everyone equates "technical analysis" with indicators and patterns, but up until a few decades ago, technical analysis meant price movement. Today only a relative handful of people understand how to interpret price movement, the rest knowing little and understanding less about chart reading.

Therefore, to say that one "doesn't use charts or technical analysis" is a meaningless statement, or at least one which conveys no useful information. It's not dissimilar to complaining that it's impossible to achieve success playing the piano when one has been trying to do it while wearing mittens.

A more accurate statement might be that the vast majority advocate charts without knowing what charts are or are for or what meaning they are intended to convey, or that the vast majority advocate technical analysis without understanding what technical analysis is or what it's supposed to do

Learn how to read a chart. Learn how to determine whether price is going up or down. You will then be leagues ahead of those who are stumbling into blind alleys. If a nine-year-old girl can do it, surely any adult who can tie his or her own shoes can do it.
 
Quote from Visaria:

I use charts and am currently unprofitable :D

I like your posts, dbphoenix. You come across as a no nonsense type of chap. Should i read your threads on here or on the trading lab site?

Not sure whether this is off topic or not since the point of my threads does have to do with developing an edge, but the TL stuff is most definitely the deep end. If you're just starting, look at the Bride Of If You Can Draw A Straight Line (You Can Be A Successful Trader), particularly the first and seventh posts. You'll know by then if it's for you. Any other questions ought to be posted there.
 
commission is not edge!

remeber those through phone days. buy 100shares cost hundreds. but still there are people make money!

nowdays, people buy 10k even 100k shares just 7bucks~10bucks for fixed commission firm.

for floating rate, buy 100shares cost 0.5buck like IB. of course if you 10kshares, IB is too expensive compare to 7bucks!

I still see there are lots of losers there.

computer technologies advance, everyone get info as fast as others. so what, using those computer generated indicators, TA, charts,... do notes generate more winners, the street still is full of suckers and losers.

that means those are not edges.

what I am doing is: when people try to be fast, I try to be slow.
when others try to be slow, I try to be fast.

I like those HLFs, computer algorithm trading. I do it intelligently and humanly.

the mass or the majority in the market often means pointless dummy. only 10% or less means the successful ones. it holds true everywhere.

TRUTH is always in the hand of just few







Quote from bighog:

WTF does all that crap have to do about a winning method?

My only concern about commissions are: What is my cost per round turn Mr. Broker? Ok, I can work with that, will fund the account and we can do business.

When I buy a box of shredded wheat biscuits I care less what the transportation costs were, what the cost of the packaging is, what the cost to the farmer for the wheat itself cost, the advertising costs, the labor costs..........it can be endless.

Commissions are a cost of doing business, deal with it on your end and forget all the other silliness. Take a valium and a shot of booze, you need to get a grip on what the fuck you are trying to comprehend.
 
Quote from ronblack:

Expectation is the average of trade returns. If it is not stationary then I argue that the probability of having negative values is high in a mean-reverting price series.
Only if you're trying to trend trade in a mean-reverting price series. Successful traders adapt to the market, they don't expect it to adapt to them.
 
Quote from tradingjournals:

I went long QQQ put at 0.26 and closed at 0.67. If it is not ZM (Lady Zero Sum) then who paid for the gains?

Is your ability to utilize your gains contingent upon identifying the party who took the other side of your trade?

If the value of that put runs beyond .67, does that mean you paid for the gains of the party to whom you sold the put?
 
Quote from NoDoji:



If the value of that put runs beyond .67, does that mean you paid for the gains of the party to whom you sold the put?
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I do not know what will happen to him/her, but I do know that in the chain of ownership of that put, there were losers because I made money, commissions were paid, and it is trading below the price at which it was originally created. Another possibility is that I might have been the last owner! I could also have been the first owner, in that case I was a lucky first owner! By now if your head is spinning thinking about who owns what option, and when it was created and closed, I do not blame you as the chain contains many upstream/downstream possibilities.
 
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