who is your fav trader to follow?
- Thread starter cashclay
- Start date
Contradictions and VN. Yes that is the only perfect correlation you get in regards to VN.
The links to the interview that I come across are to his site, Daily Speculations, only he seems to have lost control of the site. Hmm.
You have a pdf of the interview you could post?
My hint: Pick one single book, written by Victor Niederhoffer, and after you finish it, if you truly believe that his ego does not necessarily get in the way of being a long-term profitable trader then come back and let's have a civilized discussion. VN is so full of himself which goes 100% against everything that truly long-term profitable traders ever preached about. This guy cannot even admit he was/is wrong, he keeps on using excuses for each and every failure in his life. Read, for example, "The Education of a Speculator", and you will know what I am talking about. It is truly pitiful.
Not sure why Surf has such a crush on VN, maybe they had some sweet moments at Brighton Beach playing checkers or racket ball.
Not sure why Surf has such a crush on VN, maybe they had some sweet moments at Brighton Beach playing checkers or racket ball.
I've read both actually. Quite agree about his ego, after reading the books I was left with the feeling he should have been an academic.
I'm actually curious to understand the point about ever changing cycles. Does he mean there are cycles where chart patterns and moon phases would work? His tweets about earnings seem deluded.
His basic premise is that everything is quantifiable. So he quantified everything. He picked the observations and patterns with the highest degree of confidence after forming hypotheses and traded those. All good so far. Where he fails and miserably fails at that is to acknowledge the fact that market dynamics constantly alter probability distributions. Hence, he cannot accept that strong "convictions" of the past may be nothing but random occurrences today. He then goes ahead and bets the farm on his quantified metrics and every now and then it blew him off the boat. Again and again. And again. And again. Yet each time it was some others' fault. The Fed, mortgage borrowers, Argentina, and what have you....I missed where he coined a new term "ever changing cycles"? Wow, sounds like a direct admission of guilt to me. It basically reads like "I admit my probabilistic models of the past are all BS and now I can explain the breakdown of each of my models by "ever changing cycles". Well, Victor now only has to sit around for 12.33243 years and wait until a previous cycle according to his models is repeated, lol. 
If you're looking for a trader who scales in on the intraday, try NorthmanTrader (you can find him on twitter)
His basic premise is that everything is quantifiable. So he quantified everything. He picked the observations and patterns with the highest degree of confidence after forming hypotheses and traded those. All good so far. Where he fails and miserably fails at that is to acknowledge the fact that market dynamics constantly alter probability distributions. Hence, he cannot accept that strong "convictions" of the past may be nothing but random occurrences today. He then goes ahead and bets the farm on his quantified metrics and every now and then it blew him off the boat. Again and again. And again. And again. Yet each time it was some others' fault. The Fed, mortgage borrowers, Argentina, and what have you....I missed where he coined a new term "ever changing cycles"? Wow, sounds like a direct admission of guilt to me. It basically reads like "I admit my probabilistic models of the past are all BS and now I can explain the breakdown of each of my models by "ever changing cycles". Well, Victor now only has to sit around for 12.33243 years and wait until a previous cycle according to his models is repeated, lol.
"probabilistic models"
If I thought I had any probability at all beyond 50%, I don't think I could trade. For me, trading is about pulling the trigger and dealing with the results. That whole prediction thing was a long torturous experience and I'm never going back there. Today, I just assume both sides balance, and if, for example, one side of the trade is twice as likely, the other side can be trusted to offer twice the payout, otherwise the price would have already moved somewhere else. Therefore, neither side is better. It's a rule of thumb that isn't always true, but it doesn't need to be to empower me to make money. Markets are not efficient, but they are efficient enough. The thousands of traders on the other side of the trade are there for a reason, and it's not because they are all stupid. I think this realization was the breakout moment in this long journey, once you give up predicting, you are freed from sitting for long hours waiting for "high probability setups" and arguing with the market, you don't need hope anymore.