I don't know either Mav or Don, but they're both experienced professionals, and I have the utmost respect for both of them and anyone else who can carry on a reasoned discussion. Mav makes extremely valid points, but neglected to include a couple of things which should shut the detractors up: 1) Opportunity cost. 2) Compounding. It's one thing to wait two minutes, hours or days for a loss to turn around, quite another to wait two weeks, months or years. Not to mention that in the event that no recovery occurs, you are then trying to grow capital from a smaller base. One horrendous trade can wipe out years of gains, and one may never recover from it. I've been trading for 40 years. I've run $25 million of customer money in futures. I've personally made (and lost) more than $1 million in a single day. Early in the game, I wiped myself out on exactly the type of trade that Mav has criticized (fortunately it was just $5K I had run up to $50K.) Despite that experience, I've still all too often let stubborness cost me money when it shouldn't have. As in losing 2% when I should have lost 1%. The bottom line is that is that losers should be cut loose remorselessly if there's any plausible reason to think that your assessment was wrong. You may ultimately turn out to be right, but all you did was tie up capital which could have been profitably employed elsewhere, all the while putting yourself through an emotional wringer. All in pursuit of what may turn out to be a much bigger disaster than it already was 5 minutes or hours or days or weeks ago. Even if you have more money than God, as the Brights apparently do, there's still no point in holding a metastasizing loser. Better things could have been done with that capital in the meantime, even if it wasn't a significant part of net worth and its total loss wouldn't have put anyone in the poor-house. Preserve all segments of your capital at all costs. You can always reenter a trade after conducting a reassessment without the baggage of having a position. There's always another opportunity which can be viewed without the biases inherent in holding an existing position. If you want to accumulate big bucks, stay away from major capital dings.
come on now patterns continue and patterns fail, your first example is the same triangle I put up and it continued and the third is one that failed, the chart I put up is a classic asending triangle that failed, up and then trading sideways with higher lows ina triangle and the top flat, i'll go thru and find many futures charts where they did both , thats why I say you have to watch
http://i14.tinypic.com/29g0j9x.gif heres the same triangle in futures this morning, did you get short???
heres a chart of this mornings futures and one that failed last week, I won't post anymore charts on this thread because its not for that I just saw a pattern that some guys will jump on before it plays out and thought that somebody might benefit http://i14.tinypic.com/2dtvh2c.gif triangle that worked for 45 points today the same amount as before the triangle http://i14.tinypic.com/2j4dg60.gif this one failed
Very well put. And pretty much my trading/investing philosophy. I hope I can make it 40 years in the market. Got 29 more to go...
OK, I think we've pretty much beat this thing to death. I can say that there were no "opportunities lost" - why would there be? This is just one position, and as always, we try to keep only a slight (10%-15%) long bias for the overall Bright portfolio. Anyway, Bob will have a nice chuckle that everyone is concerned, LOL... All the best, Don
Don, you've just hit on a hot topic for Maverick's and your next Paltalk discussion: Bright mostly short the market, Mav mostly long. That is, unless beforehand that difference in trading philosophy is also quickly debate-beaten-to-death in Round 2 of this thread... Or does Long vs. Short the Market deserve its own Don and Mav, Part Trois! (Live Chat) ET thread...? If so, just don't add another trader's name in the title...
I said that we are long the market, with pairs of course, with the long side a bit bigger than the short side. I think we're good for now, as far as threads go...but thanks anyway. Don
I'm always game for a chat, whether it be on Paltalk or in person. I might be in NY for the trader expo if anyone wants to match wits or exchange pleasantries.
Let me know privately what you think of the expo this year. The Vegas expo was a mere fraction of what it was a couple of years ago. Maybe things are picking up there as well. Don