Actually no highly intelligent being, including yours truly, would put up with the nonsense and boredom of completing a PhD and sitting hours on end listening and working mostly on trivial crap or teaching undergraduates basic science. Capisci? PhD programs are the refuge of those that can't hack reality and learn from reading books (once if at all on weekends..). Why am I wasting my time with you?. Because I enjoy punching bags and crushing egos.
Actually, I think it's just basic probability of a bunch of independent events multiplied together (eg (p)^(n-loss) * (1-p)^(n-wins) ), but turned around with logs to get streak expectations. In that case, I don't think it's a secret formula.
Profitable individual traders are by nature a bit anti kook intellectual. If we listed to our professor we would not be involved in a random efficient game. However, many profitable traders have multiple degrees. so I do not think it is an anti intellectualism. Its just anti b.s.
Thanks for the info. All along you sounded like a dropout. You have not been to a serious school for PhD. Had you been there you would know that there is no such thing as a part-time PhD. As a matter of fact, most serious universities require PhD students to get an assistanship so they can work full-time. Also, you lack reading skills. You are an impulsive responder. I qualified my distinction about "serious" universities. Drop it Mike or continue to dig hard...
Ok Bill. So lets get the facts straight here, you don't have a grad. degree nor a trading track record. But, for some reason or another, you're the authority on all things trading and all aspects of academia??? How's that work exactly? Hmmmmm, and still no track record nor any evidence that your data mining and constant plugging of price action lab (or some other curve fitting wonder tool) actually provides value. When I asked that you provide evidence of a trading record, you got in a huff and posted some random call you made on the index. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=225560&perpage=10&pagenumber=4 Ok, so now you call some poster out about his doing his math PhD. You're basically discrediting this kid because you have some false information about higher education with having zero higher education yourself, right? (Still waiting on that degree you portend to have). Again, just like with my track record, I'll prove your false claims about my degree status in a matter of minutes. Care to wager some money on your claim of me never attending a graduate program from a top ten engineering school? How about it? Can you back up any of your bullshit with a dollar number? Bill, you come across as a wannabe "smart guy", all hat and no cattle. Oh yeah, and I will keep calling you out when you're beyond your scope of knowledge. Why? Because you have a bad habit of making statements that make you sound like you know what you're talking about.
Wow, what a nice pissing match this has become! Just wonder how someone with only 1 looser in 6 months and more than a thousand trades falls into some categorisation "outlier"? How about a repeat in the 6 months afterwards, "plain lucky"? "There are no patterns", yeah right. As long as there are these threads I know that my system (which has stayed unchanged through 10 years) will keep on rolling on. Keep on pissing into the winds (random walk) guys, errr keep on pissing your money away into my account, thanks! Have a nice day, errrr pissing contest...
I gotta back up Mike here. I had a boss who was getting a phd at night - he had worked his way into a quant position without a phd and felt like he needed one but had a good job he didn't want to leave. Serious university? Not top 10, but definitely not a joke. How do you define serious university? Is a phd from a semi-serious university better or worse than no phd??? And the guy who said you can't do this in a top finance/econ program is only partly correct. You can't start that way, but you can definitely finish that way. After 2-3 years you can be in a totally different city. I have known people who did this too.
I have received requests from ET members to close this thread. This would not delete the thread but instead preserve it from going off topic. Please feel free to reply or PM if you would like me to keep it open. I will not close it if others feel that they want to make more contributions.
I think you should close it and re-open it on September 20th. That should give the PhDs and the other mixed nuts some time to study and ponder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vyx9sa99E&feature=related
Right... because there are no PhD's at AQR, or Apollo, or GSAM, or any of the major quant funds that slosh around billions of dollars ahead at this hands of these guys.... There's a common misconception on ET. Let me correct it for you: You do NOT have to believe in market efficiency or perfect market randomness to have a PhD. It's in fact not a requirement.