If you agree that the market is complex, why would you to use tools that are simple and dumbed down? A screw driver is a simple tool but sometimes one needs to consider that a power drill might deliver better quality in a home remodeling project.
Correct but remember how many people we have all heard of that back-tested the bejesus out of their models only to explode in real-time. Back-test non-variable occurrences and your results are more apt to be consistent. Back-test variable occurrences and your results are more apt to be inconsistent.
Interesting analogy and a different way to view a scalping environment inside longer term view of price . . . but it works!!!
Which is better? 1) Have a system explode with live money 2) Have the same sysem explode in OOS testing or in a demo account IME, if it is a bad system it WILL fail in both.
I use very complex tools. My question was directed at Jack and one of discovery? To answer your question "why would you to use tools that are simple and dumbed down?" Because I don't care. Whatever works ... uber-technical ... or as stupid as Up means up ... There is a diminishing return to knowledge in technicals. To the degree that it can hamper ones ability to win trades. I made millions only occasionally referencing on "line charts" on occasion. The most technical I got was trading based on level 2 and MM positioning. (This put me dead simple dumbed down in the middle of price, volume and time and sales.) At that juncture technicals were a joke to me and only drew a map that I had created behind my activities and showed what I had caused for others to dissect while I prospered. There were 4,000-30,000 investors in and out of our group using critical market symbiotic techniques. So ... purer simple indicators can have huge value.
Loosing real money is definately worse & testing a bad strategy is simply disheartening but testing inside a variable environment gives people a false sense of security in their system. I've seen many times where a narrowly tested strategy doesn't hold up to the optimum test of long periods of time.
I always make it a point to read your posts. While I do not orient to up and down, I do use an up and down oriented chart for Premium considerations and it is a 1 minute real time chart that locks in the past on 1 minute intervals. The Premium may be found using any number of resourses. The web site riskarb.com is one of those. There, is is set before open using the business school type orientation of fundamental analysis calculations on the DJIA stocks. This means it is an important value since the Premium is used around the world by the larger organizations. It, therefore, is a terrific referential value that is set on a daily basis. For roll over indexes, the premium is in relationship. By using the Cash value of the DJIA and relating it to DJXX or YM, you have a simple indicator (call it X) of the present market relationship to the Premium Call it Y)(determined by FA). The two values, X and Y are not always the same during the day. Some organizations calculate the Premium and use it for gating their bots. A typical value of change during the day is 4 points. This is called "drift" and these bots are triggered to take advantage of the disparity because it is felt that the disparity will be corrected if it drifts too far. This is correct for making money doing arbitrage. Hence the name of the site, riskarb.com. For everyone's comfort, I have mentioned a lot about the CW oriented aspects of the premium. You mentioned that the "leading" aspect of indicators is a nice consideration. Here the lead is 30 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes; I find such an amount of time a good amount as compared to the amount of time a person may spend looking at the progress of a chart such as your multi indicator chart. By using a pre open setting and not dealing overtly with drift, a person can take advantage of the "tells" from those who most influence the market. Script or a snippet is sufficient for using the Premium as a leading indicator. Any person can do the first and second derivatives visually and at the pace of normal trading of turns. Take X and Y and use arithmetic so that when the markt goes long, your display bar value is UP. (black) This will automatically take care of when the market is going DOWN (red). This gives you a row of bars with amplitudes and the amplitudes vary from bar to bar. A line drawn from bar to bar (I just look) is either sloping up or sloping down. This is the first derivative. It trading making money happens all the time. When you are as far away from a turn, you can know that by looking for the bar to bar line becoming horizontal. It changes its slope from one sign to another. This is an early warning system for telling you that taking a trade's profit segment is comming up. All of this is offest in a leading manner as you see and it is parasitic to those who trade the big money. I call them "smart money" since it shows how they use the premium for arbitrage with huge sums of capital. All smart money exhibits an odd harmonic Fourier wave form, almost. To "see" it, think of a black head and shoulders and a red head and shoulders. Make one adjustment (go from flute to oboe so to speak). Simplify the left shoulder by drawing a line from the shoulder to the head so the intial part of the formation is "smoothed". (In an oboe the fifth is dominant.) Read the OP post in a thread called "how to sit on winners". The waveform described above does just that as a leading indicator. The OP describes in his first post exactly how he screws up and induces permanent fear of trading by hyis repeated failure. He says he gets in when before the red goes to black (think of the premium velocity increasing (getting less and less negative, going to zero and tutrning positive) on a long entry (at some non fearful point). He exits on the left shoulder of price. and watches from the sidelines to the line across the tops of the price shoulder. He holds to the peak of price and begins his "freeze" (the Lizard Syndrome and the Bohr Effect combo). His oxygen has declined in his brain to 30% below required for rational thinking. He holds the drawdown from the top of the price head and goes upside down due to the second poor entry. The Premium snippet using X and Y, would give him a leading indicator and it eliminates "seeing" his first exit (he should not display price on his screen; it screws him over with fear). Long ago there was an SPM that had lagging signals (for two reasons: wrong signal and lagging signal). So it traded many angular degrees late in the cycle. The Premium snippet is the reverse of a lagging signal. Look at the "signs" of X and Y to be able to use arithmetic to get the color to always work for UP and DOWN trends. The color is the trend. The greatest advantage is that the magnitude of the bars tell you how fast you are making money. On my display I put two lines on each side of neutral. They tell me the relationship to trend slope to bar volatility. All ATS's need this measure for sidelining on an CW derived ATS (the riddle of induction problem that is always there in CW). Smart money works by induction and there is the small draw back of what they call "noise". I do not deal in either anomalies or noise but those I am parasitic to, do. You will find a huge increase in your profitability when you begin to use leading indicators such as this Premium snippet based upon observing first and second derivatives in a Fourier series setting. Some platform providers we have worked with have it as SOP these days.
I did a subsequent post to show how arithmetic can be used. Rhetorically speaking, were you surprised that such a simple mathematical solution existed to provide a reliable leading indicator? The good news is that you will probably wait until someone gives you the finished product before you fail to learn how to make money with it. Then, of course, you will get off one of your one liners in order do deal with your personal issues. You are lucky I didn't bring up absolute values..... lol....
Jack, I must admit I am the original "short attention span" poster. This is why I prefer reading and posting in threads where the thought process is "suppose" to be precise and to the point . . . but there is always the exception. I've asked the question for years and have yet for anyone to give me a cognizant answer. You have posed the point again regarding a mathematical solution producing a reliable indicator so I will restate my question again. If you would, I would appreciate a clear, concise and relatively short answer if you can. Thank you in advance. My question: How can any mathematical problem be solved, with any accuracy, when the factors of these specific mathematical equations are constantly changing, not stable?