Quote from MandelbrotSet:
I care because I want the proof.
That's an honest an answer as I can give you. Seriously. If you are going to present a trading system to the public as working and making money, please don't get mad at me when I ask you to prove it. :eek:
I know what you mean, but most people don't comprehend the value of 3rd party verification, be it on collective2, futurestruth, timertrac, or any other website.
Don't ever believe someone's website where they only show you a backtest. It's fine to observe a program that they claim to have written as long as it is verified by a disinterested, 3rd party. The real fraud of Madoff was the fact that he had the Greenwich Connecticut piece of junk saying these were his real returns.
<i>But wait! Doesn't that mean I can trick a third party, too?</i>
No, it doesn't, and here is why.
Madoff was a pioneer of the NASDAQ trading platform. This gave him inside information with the ability to manipulate time stamps. What happened was that Madoff could forge his statements, but the greenwich place would actually verify through several third party time and sales windows that these trades took place, when, in fact, they actually didn't. Basically, Madoff will be the only person in the world to do this.
That means we must wait for an independent, third party to validate the results of any and all system attempting to gain credence on the internet in particular. The real way a hedge fund goes about picking their traders is to request P&L statements of their actual accounts. Since we're not going to provide statements out here on the internet, the last place to verify is with third parties that track real-time recommendations.
OK, mandy, does this answer your question? A guru with something to hide might get upset, but one like myself and those at collective2 aren't hiding anything, and any other third party source.
