Actually my math was off. 4pts *$50/per car = 200 not $250 but it still gets you to $1M. And while I'm on the subject, trading 20 cars at 5K margin per car means you would be taking an account from $100K to $1M. Some might argue that $5K/car is not enough and $10K/car is more reasonable in lowering risk of ruin. There is a big difference between a 10,000% return and a 400% return.
note that there's much more to market environment than "bull, bear, sideways". every trading system out there is designed to exploit some correlation. the problem with correlations on the market is that they are not stationary -- ie they can and will change over time. hell, i would be a billionare by now if the correlations that my earlier systems bet on hadn't faded away over time. i'm not. - jaan
Good luck Sabena in your quest! By the way, you might be interested in hearing what Linda Raschke told us in her seminar about Larry Williams. She said that for that particular contest, Larry's broker did not enforce the minimum margin requirements in the futures positions he was carrrying. If they had, he would not have been able to achieve those results as he would have been stopped out of his positions. -- ITZ
Ryan Jones, author of "The Trading Game" , is the money management techniques that Larry Williams used and uses. Interesting stuff.
Check this out from a Larry Williams message board. "I was originally under the impression that Larry's Championship trades were mostly lasting more than 1 day. However, in his Ultimate Trading Guide books, he states that in the first few months, most of his trades were daytrades - in which he grew his account from 10,000 to 600,000 from January to April. From his book, my impression is that he used a simple volatility breakout system as his main tool. I'll have to check this at some point, but I am most interested in this competition because it is one of the few times when a guru's results were verified" http://ctcr.investors.net/people/williamsforum.html
Jaan, The real trick is to have techniques that are not correlated to market conditions, wether it is bull, bear, trading range, any market behavior. If you can do that, then you can ALWAYS make money CONSISTENTLY.
And the trick to CONSISTENT profits is surfing the small waves, because there are so many of them. I believe that is also what Dave Floyd from www.careerdaytrader.com is doing and Robert Tharp told me that he has one of the best records he has ever seen... The intraday range for the S&P is about 20 points during regular trading hours. With one trade each day, you CANNOT CONSISTENLY catch 50 % of this range. With 2 trades, you have more chance. With 3 trades, you have even more chance. And so on.... Should there not be an optimal number of trades to be made each day, taking into account the cost of commission and the spread of .25 you have to overcome, to maximize the number of points to be made...? Yes,there is !
Interesting that these guys use a quote from Ed Seykota, considering that he is strictly a longer term trader... Scalping theory is that you can "catch" all these waves...Everybody is competing at this level... Just out of curiosity Sabena...Do you even trade?
I don't think Sabena could trade himself out of a baseball card convention but he sure can shovel it.
Guys, I must spread around confusion to make the bet that will be organized worthwile for the few that bet on me....:0))) End of 2003 you guys will say to yourself, "That Sabena .....hmmmmmmmmmm