Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
Trading success will elude you until you change the rigidity of your belief system. You're full of untruths and duplicities.
Your pal Neiderhoffer employs a long delta, short gamma strat that's all about a continued rise in SPX accompanied by shallow corrections. To wit, he dropped 30% in a single month last year as stocks made a relatively mild counter trend concession in price.
When market's are readjusting valuations they trend. If participant's feel there's value in a small range of prices, markets chop. That's all there is to it.
Further any mathematician will tell you it's easy to "prove" trends. Do you think if I took the number of up ticks vs. down ticks of all U.S. stock and bond prices from 1983-1999 that there was a "random" preponderance of "up" data? Get real.
Trends in both the micro and macro are so prevalent in fact that I'd argue it's faders who are in fact seeking the "black swan". No doubt a flaw in most us is the willingness to explore the already known.
Old prices are like old friends. A fellow trader once described bond prices as like a soap opera. You can miss them for 6 months but the plot's easy to pick up again. Having the confidence to be initiative in terra incognita rather than be responsive is what trading is about.
Anywhere know where in Boca, this guy's outfit is based? He's hard to find. Address?
