Here is a picture of my programming attempt....to Replace the drawing of Trendlines. This is still a work in progress....but....so far....it is working very well....just need some more tweaking of the code. Kind of a combination of a ZigZag and Trendline....in Real Time. This shows the ER....with a 610 tick chart to the Left....a 100 tick chart to the Right. From Friday....11-10-06. VSTscalper
Finally. You have declared yourself to be a "you can't predict the markets" bigot. So nothing anyone can say about anything will convince you. You won't recognize that being a "stat arb",dispersion trader, relative value trading or being a "trend follower" implies that you are predicting that the arb result you trade is likely to happen or that a trend once started is more likely to continue for some amount before reversing or that fundamentals are likely to result in a price change. So now that I understand where the distortion in your mind lies I can leave you with it happily knowing you have nothing lucid to contribute to a discussion on trendlines. Cheers everyone ----------------------------- The things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the justifications and arguments are the least important part of the belief. That's why you can win the argument, prove them wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place. You've attacked the wrong thing. So what do you do? Agree to disagree. Or fight. - C. Zakalwe.
This thread reminds me of a book from the early 1980's, "Ideas Are A Dime A Dozen - But The Man Who Puts Them Into Practice Is Worth A Million". The author was asked why he gave away some of his greatest techniques. His answer was, way less than 5% will ever bother to try them. In trading I'd say it's way less than 1% that possess enough teeth to bite into the subject matter.
He does have strong views. In his job, he probably follows the conventional orthodox foundations of the financial industry. While it is not necessary to predict the market, there certainly are a lot of methods that espouse prediction and then use accomaniments to take care of the difficulties of doing predictions. I dictated and attached a long Word document on the continuum of the range of successes those who are users of trendlines. Most of the contributors here fit into subsets for looking at the continuum: users, nonusers, people limited by their methods somewhee along the line and others who do have a handicap that placed them on the line more to the left than necessary. It may or may not be possible for a person to see this or that or to even be able to consider inputs. In all these cases a person cannot arrive at the right side of any continuum. Tao is particularly meaningful as a person or as a statement of where a person can be residing. It is very valuable to draw people out on their situation, condition and circumstances. Often a reader can get a chance to have better personal effectiveness or efficiency if they can put themselves in another place and then profit from the experience. I simply regard prediction as unecessary. I do not find that I nned to deal in any way with pascal or Fremat or anything along that line. This is because I have turned to an approach that is oriented to making money very rapidly and I test the rate of acquisition against what is available as time unfolds. As I examine these two things, there is no aspect of prediction that shows up at all. Here is an example: GMXR two day hold going from trendline crossing the channel. I do not look at stocks that do consolidation. I only deal with trending stocks and they have to be of excellent quality. Trending and excellence go hand and glove it turns out. By annoating stocks with trendlines and their channels and their internal formations, you get to take all the market offers from your lists of trending stocks. I use the "unusual" volume as a sort so that i have time to enter aftr the leading indicator of price shows the price will be lifting off the trendline. To have a day's advance notice of the volume making the move, I use the leading indicator of volume which is the STOCH (5, 2, 3) fast line going upward through 50% see the bottom indicator. I feel it is possible to run stock portfolios at a money velocity rate of 2.5% a day ordinarily. By doing the annotations on charts (it all starts with trend lines) and projecting them and then using leading indicators of price (volume) and a leading indicator of volume (STOCH 5,2,3), it is roughly like shooting fish in a barrel. Commodities trading does much much better for several reasons: it is leveraged, a cycle of profit taking occurs 20 to 40 times a day instead of once every few days (2 to 4) in stocks, the % of the indiviual move is greater, and you are going both ways by doing linked actions of holding and reversing to stay on the right side of the market where the trendlines are overlapped so you have advance warning. There is no prediction as you see. leading indicators of price replace prediction it turns out.
Mr Hershey, I have always found your posts most intriguing,though i readily admit I havent studied your teachings.As you have generously taken the time to address me,and in fact made me smile,I will carefully read up on your methods.. My cup is emptied...