trend following delusion shattered

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Quote from OddTrader:

That reminds me this thread:
$10,000 Challenge...
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43072&highlight=$10+000
:confused:
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I thought of the same thing. The similarities are too striking .

There too, superficially, a 'reasonable' demand was being made to prove profitability with past tax returns. But, in reality, underneath all the pseudo-logical babble was a desperate plea to be shown a way to guaranteed profitability.

It would not surprise me if these two posters share more than mental outlook and perhaps even have the same IP address.:D:p :D
 
Trend trading works (at least for me)... but trends are only a very minor part of the game...

Most of the game is about sticking to the strategy (psychology) and being clever about position sizing (money management) and position management (i.e. not being fixated with the entry strategy)...

Another thing about trend trading is not to have unrealistic expectations... 60% per annum is an excellent return unless you are in a very hot market...
 
And now for something a little different.

I, personally, believe in trends because I have reasonable eyesight and because I think I also have at least a middling amount common sense. It is difficult to deny something that more than just occasionally stares at you from your screen. (Assuming, of course, that you believe in screens.)

As for trend trading, I am a bit more "agnostic" about that. I don't think that a trend must necessarily be defined a priori in order to benefit from it. Rather, I think it is sufficient to identify "low risk" entry points that characteristically give you a small spurt in your trade direction. It is a trend in price that will then make an otherwise modestly profitable or scratch trade into a more profitable one. All you have to do is be there to catch it. The entry method can be quite independent of the perceived trend for a trader to benefit from that trend. But it is the trending of price in your trade direction that will result in the more notable trades.

Because trends often change "unexpectedly," I personally don't like to put too much "stock" into identifying and exploiting the prevailing one. However, if it coincides with my entry mechanism then, more often than not, it is a happy coincidence with a favorable outcome.

If you think it through, you will see that I am not talking from both sides of my mouth. Every trend has one or more countertrend moves. Each of these countertrend moves may be viewed as trend of a different horizon in its own right; it, too, may be an exploitable "trend." My strength (or "edge") is not so much in identifying the dominant trend for the moment as it is in the execution of "low risk" entries which will either die cheaply on the vine or bloom with a trend. It would be the absence of at least a bit of ongoing movement in a given direction (i.e., a trend) that would result in a gradual erosion of my account. Fortunately, that is not happening right now.

The upshot? Any profitable (or unprofitable) trade that continues to become more profitable (or more unprofitable) is the result of a trend of one kind or another, whether you have identified it in advance or not. The idea is to avoid trading the one that is going against you at the moment in your current time frame. By that definition we are all "trend" traders of sorts, even Hanksurfer.
 
Quote from NickelScalper:

Congratulations on your success.

What I'm looking for is a formulation of method aside from the luck that keeps the rare practitioner of an essentially random system from going broke.
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No, you're looking for someone to hand you a system. We've caught on, and it ain't gonna happen.

M
 
Quote from Mathemagician:

No, you're looking for someone to hand you a system. We've caught on, and it ain't gonna happen.

M
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There is no such system.

This one calls for more math and less "magic."
 
Quote from NickelScalper:

And now a restatement of the challenge question as consolidated from several posts:

What is a reliable, publicly available method that can be applied to past price action to determine a usefully large positive or negative number d such that (p1-p0)>=d, where p0 is the current market price and p1 will be the market price in the near future?

I'm looking for your answer to be posted here, not contained in a pdf at another site, "watch me trade," "I am successful," etc., etc. Second, the proof of your answer is also to be posted here, in the form of real time trading calls that specify on what basis your method is being invoked and a target price.

Constructive criticism is welcome, including from Hank and others more or less on the same side of the issue.
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nickel,

why lefty brought index arb into the discussion is beyond me. index arb has nothing to do with your question. he just cant seem to grasp what we are talking about.

i will even go so far as to say, show me ANY system , not just public, that will do what you question requests.
 
Quote from inandlong:

Hank your comment here is a good one. Well at least I think so because it is the very reason that I like to use a major moving average as a reason to get in on a trend. Lol, which of course raises once again the question that has been discussed previously, and explored by ourselves professionally, paraphrased - "does it pay to enter a trade when price crosses a moving average?"

But, on topic, I rarely enter a trade based on trend just because the price has been trending because as I mentioned earlier, empirically I have no reason to believe that what price has been doing is an indication of what price will do.

To provide an answer - but certainly not the definitive answer - to the question "what use are trends...", trends provide upper and lower boundaries for trend lines :) which can be used to determine a change in trend.
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thank you, inandlong. you are well aware, that my entire trading method at one time involved MA crossovers--did it work---well, yes, sometimes. larry connors in his book " how market really work" did extensive studies on MA crossovers and found that fading a cross over actually works better than going in the same direction. interesting, aye.
 
Quote from Thunderdog:





The upshot? Any profitable (or unprofitable) trade that continues to become more profitable (or more unprofitable) is the result of a trend of one kind or another, whether you have identified it in advance or not. The idea is to avoid trading the one that is going against you at the moment in your current time frame. By that definition we are all "trend" traders of sorts, even Hanksurfer.
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well, i am nicely intrend of DJIA and EBAY right now.

:D
 
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