Why do I see "Trends" in Randomly Generated Data?

Quote from MAESTRO:

And how many rains do you need to have to be certain? How long is it going to take? What if you saw 10 rains but it was a fluke much like 10 heads in a row in a coin tossing game? It amuses me that the level of probabilities understanding on ET is still lower then a fifth grade.

In my case those occurrences are in the hundreds of thousands. I was talking to a group the other day and we estimated we have watched, researched or documented over a half million real-time oscillations, each, in a variety of fractal charts. I'd say that was a sufficient size data set to extract some decently reliable data outcomes.
 
Quote from MAESTRO:

And how many rains do you need to have to be certain? How long is it going to take? What if you saw 10 rains but it was a fluke much like 10 heads in a row in a coin tossing game? It amuses me that the level of probabilities understanding on ET is still lower then a fifth grade.

I don't have time to actually run this for you but I'll guess that somewhere between 200 and 2000 observations would give you some good confidence levels, depending on how you structure what you want to prove and the level of confidence required.

Similar work in pharmaceutical and consumer testing uses about this number of subjects. A recent consumer testing study on weight loss diets where I did the IT consulting but not the statistics had 460 subjects. This was enough to support a claim of efficacy with the FDA.

For Phase III trials most pharmaceutical companies want several thousand subjects as they have a large liability when a drug goes bad and they get a class action lawsuit.
 
Quote from Jerry030:

I don't have time to actually run this for you but I'll guess that somewhere between 200 and 2000 observations would give you some good confidence levels, depending on how you structure what you want to prove and the level of confidence required.

Similar work in pharmaceutical and consumer testing uses about this number of subjects. A recent consumer testing study on weight loss diets where I did the IT consulting but not the statistics had 460 subjects. This was enough to support a claim of efficacy with the FDA.

For Phase III trials most pharmaceutical companies want several thousand subjects as they have a large liability when a drug goes bad and they get a class action lawsuit.

Side bar . . . Jerry, are you located in Nevada? Nothing more specific asked.
 
Quote from ProfLogic:

I look at the trading environment, I think, like you do, with one exception.

I think the markets are entirely random but that their randomness is definable using in fractal based charts. I understand how MAESTRO utilizes market information to profit and I understand what you mean by the non-randomness and profiting from it.

I'm not closed minded, like some in these forums, that think that there is only one way to "skin-a-cat". I've seem that individuals profit from seemingly opposite views of price action. I've also been shown that though opposites sometime both produce profits that one side is usually more consistent that the other . . . but not always. This is why I have a hard time understanding the, "my way or the highway" attitude some traders have in regards to old standard techniques.

I'm from Ohio and fully understand the "flying" analogy. I'm a student of Einstein and even had the opportunity to speak in one of his classrooms in Zurich so I understand that analogy. Technology progresses but individuals refuse to admit that techniques COULD possibly progress to improve the percentages and abilities of trading or investing profitability.

I would agree that there is randomness. It's a chaotic system which oscillates between totally random and probabilistic behavior. The trick is to distinguish between these prior to making a trade. One method I use is to calculate the correlation coefficient of the predicted behavior of market in relation to its actual behavior at each bar and only trade when the first order derivative of this coefficient is increasing. This of course has a lag based on the number of bars into the future that I’m trying to predict.

I've never worked with fractals in the market, but use Wavelets.
Do you have any links to sites that would give some information on fractals in the market?

People cling to old methods for a number of reasons:

1) Fear of the unknown

2) Internal insecurity manifesting as an imprudent dependence on what they already know and an aversion to something new which they may have to learn.

3) Viewing themselves as an expert in a field and feeling they have to maintain that status by keeping different ideas at bay.

4) Having failed in an area and wanting others to fail as well...misery needs company.

Jerry030
 
Quote from ProfLogic:

Side bar . . . Jerry, are you located in Nevada? Nothing more specific asked.

No, Chicago a bit west of the CBOT and CME.

The story is from Wired Magazine.
 
Quote from Jerry030:

I've never worked with fractals in the market, but use Wavelets.
Do you have any links to sites that would give some information on fractals in the market?
Jerry030

Wavelets and price fractals are interchangeable as I use them.

Most references to "price fractals" are in relation to Elliott Wave, Gann, Fibonacci, cycles and momentum indicators. I personally do not follow those lines of analysis as I find them too inconsistent.

I have found that pure price is perfect and then viewing that pure price movement in fractals or, as you are familiar with, wavelets, gives a trader a reasonable and consistent view of trading opportunites inside the larger or longer term moves of price.
 
Quote from MAESTRO:

FYI


Try this one on for size...

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cache/p...zSzbibliographyzSzlo_mck_88.pdf/lo88stock.pdf

Stock Market Prices Do Not
Follow Random Walks:
Evidence from a Simple
S p e c i f i c a t i o n T e s t

Andrew W. Lo
A. Craig MacKinlay
University of Pennsylvania

In this article we test the random walk hypothesis
for weekly stock market returns by comparing variance
estimators derived from data sampled at different
frequencies. The random walk model is
strongly rejected for the entire sample period (1962-
1985) and for all subperiod for a variety of aggregate
returns indexes and size-sorted portofolios........
 

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Quote from ProfLogic:

Wavelets and price fractals are interchangeable as I use them.

Most references to "price fractals" are in relation to Elliott Wave, Gann, Fibonacci, cycles and momentum indicators. I personally do not follow those lines of analysis as I find them too inconsistent.

I have found that pure price is perfect and then viewing that pure price movement in fractals or, as you are familiar with, wavelets, gives a trader a reasonable and consistent view of trading opportunites inside the larger or longer term moves of price.

I agree 100% all you need is OHLC as input and then trasnsform that into predictive elements.
 
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