Thanks Mandelbrotset (tasty handle by the way) for the insights. I do not want to appear nitpicking but you seem to accept the limiting nature of cynism. Isn't it more productive to abandon this stance and free one's mind in order to enable it to be like a sponge? And I do not mean naivety here...
French is indeed a beautiful language if spoken properly. To the trading. If you see the chart and realize on the functional level the neutrality of the information the market events carry, what do you need this cynical perception for?
Mudgins is taking a nap, so you get me. The functional level of which you speak is detectable only cynically. All events of which you speak are the result of manipulation. Cynicism is required because it is much easier to believe that the markets are random or deterministic or chaotic than it is to fully intellectually accept that the markets are manipulated. Apparently I don't speak French well enough, because I never once got laid in Paris. Nobody liked my carefully cultivated university accent. Or the fact that I look like the sterotype of a French criminal. Think Jean Reno. With overtones of Tcheky Karyo. That's me.
Thanks Joe. I will proceed much quieter. The functional level I spoke of applied to the perception. To be more precise I meant that an individual can (must?)accept the neutrality of information coming from the market (chart) and behave (function) accordingly. Sorry for my bad English.The fourth sentense of your response leaves me completely clueless. If I understand it right than it should be very difficult for a cynic to believe that the markets are manipulated? The financial industry seems to have chosen the easy way but then again if this is the case then the EMH can not be true any more? I don't speak French either. Don't blame the French nana. It is difficult nowadays to respect patriots.
There are some first considerations of thinking going on. Soon the purpose of thinkng may come on the table. Notice the persistence of requests for show and tell. Contrast this with the reference posts That give urls to the material requested from a couple of years ago that deal with these persistent requests to "see" content. Now we also have an instruction set for anyone who wishes to make videos. Through all this resistance and turmoil, there is a stream of thought on thinking and implications of the mind where thinking could be taking place. Spending a few class sessions to experiment with a few objects can and does lead a person to understand how different fauna models of having a sensory input is obtained mechanically. Moving the retina is one model obtained and recognizing the asymptotes of a hyperbola lead to the fixed focal length of a lens doesn't fall into the more convenient human vision model. But by extrapolation of knowing a constant focal length isn't practical does lead to how important it is to be able the have a flexible lens whose focal length is changed unconsciously. People who have never been exposed to process learning are usually stuck with the pervasive content learning of formal educational systems of modern civilizations. For my children, I could never afford to have their learning take place under the US Public school system. For grad students in Architecture, I oftern made their first team assignment designing a Montessori school. Once they rebelled all the way to the Dean of Faculty because they felt the assignment was unfair since there was a dirth of information available in search resources. All the way up the ladder to the Dean. I was an Adjunct Prof, and commuted to the campus by air for 3 to 4 day segments of immersion learning. See the book(let) on the creation of concepts when Mud Island was created by these students. The seven part full page spread systematizes the seven stage iterative design process that acknowledges it originator. Mud Island is just south of the present crest coming down the Mississippi river off Memphis. Memphis is in Tennessee. Learning to trade happens to be a process as well. as everyone has found out taching trading and learning to trade via content forms of formal OR informal education DOES NOT WORK. Refer to the results of the financial industry and the top tier B school educational systems. Also refer to the CW of the financial industry. Semper Fi. Marines have to peform and they are trained to perform. Don Bright runs a 4 week boot camp. Capish?? Troops drill. They automatically respond to anything in their environment that threatens them. They are not free to exercise any option that they would previously choose. Steenbarger adopts tha leading fighter pilot strategy to train his client traders who are in a psychological state in need of medical and psychological care. John boyd (OODA). So there are many systems designed to overcome the fear of the unknown. People who are content educated are NOT educated to deal with trading at expert levels. anyone who has seen videos on how the lens equations are created cannot derive the lens equations at a later time in their lives. If a person is presented the lens equations in a text book and does home work, likewise he loses the ability to derive the lens equations should he be asked or should he be in a place where deriving them would be helpful. I person who takes note from a blackboard and write down the lecture notes on the lens equations cannot use those equations years later because they are not available to him form his mind. The people who did the Montessor school design (they were told in a join meeting with the Deamnand myself that they had just learned the first concept of doing design; so had the DEAN); designed Mud Island AND they teeamed up to write a book(let) about just how the mind uses iterative refinement to do creation and be designers. The AIA book I mentioned had as a component interviewing 800 architects at regional training workshops. The concept of doing harmonious design between the built and natural environment is the underlying theme of that, now, two volume book. As you sit and read, you are a product of an educational system that did not train you to build your mind. as we see this serves as a filter to exclude people from SCT who are unable to grasp that learning is a process and the best that can be done to enable this process is to support the process as the mind is built. get a battery a piece of wire, a notbook and a flash light bulb. Use a pencil in the notebook to figure out the four ways to light the light bulb. I am doing you a big favor telling you one thing: there are four ways. fifth graders doing this admire each other when they find out there is more than one way. Formal content education slowly and permanently extinguishes this ability to admire because it induces the formal concept that there is ONE RIGHT ANSWER. You will notice here in ET being RIGHT is pervasive and incorrect as a concept to strive for. You will also notice being RIGHT far exceeds being RICH in ET as well as the financial industry. We are talking about a 90% failure rate in trading where by seventh grade (first form), anyone ought to be able to run a portfolio (PVT) quite well. So leraning to learn is the first order of business and this hinges on one thing: building one's mind. Put a pile of bars on a table. Go through the process of learning how two adjacent bars work to eliminate the requirement to use probability in trading. This is how little children first used scraps a nun gave them to learn how to do Arithmetic. they often did not have a structure to learn in since they were waifs and so poor and the nun did not have a place to teach them at first. You can visit a Montessori school in Bucks County, PA that started in an abandoned warehouse. What are the possible combinations of two adjacent bars? Do two bars take into accound all cases? When all cases are taken care of is there any need for probabilities? what did you discover is the common theme of ever case? How does having a common theme for all cases and not having to use probability affect the choice of mathematics for making money? Why does every base for systems of numeration have different and independent Algebras? What is the corresponding thing in Montessori for a rod in Arithmetic for Algebra? So you are content educated. Trading is process learning. Why do you use the wrong mathematics for trading? Why did you screw up the selection of the wrong mathematics? The mind only processes positives. What you have in your mind cannot be erased. To be successful as a trader you must have the correct and available memory as your first recourse; the best recourse. Can you see how T28, trader666, babak, surfer, Mark brown , Covel. Greenspoon, Steenbarger, Taleb and many many others have no chance of repairing their minds to create the best first recourse for any trading situation, condition or circumstance? This year, we get to experience markets that are especially rewarding. I mentioned going through 12,000 yesterday and a week or so ago I mentioned going through 370 on SP in the SP thread. I posted a chart at the beginning of the year for the seven legs of 2008. As Babak found out when he called me on this stuff, I called the first turn to the day about 80 days ahead of the turn on 17 MAR 08. At that time many people did not know what I meant by leg. These are content educated people. So it is a good idea to have a folder (3 ring binder) and keep records on how 2008 is unfolding. Daily, authorities, not talking heads, are making good comments on what isn't happening and what is portended. Having this process of learning the market contexts is very important.
I would beg to differ. Skepticism is a component of critical thinking for without it you absorb the drivel that so very frequently is conventional wisdom (or unconventional wisdom for that matter). Cynicism is indeed a productivity killer and gives nothing except itself. lj
What is your native language, by the way? I am an old man and have had my reasoning powers ruined by years of reading Jack. What I mean is that it is easy to find learned assertions that the market is rational. Or random. Or deterministic. Or chaotic. Or perfectly ordered. You NEVER see arguments that it is totally manipulated. That's a no-no. I have had posts deleted from here and elsewhere when I have argued that case. So I assert that only a complete cynic can ignore the many acceptable received opinions which wash over us in the trading media. Detecting and quantifying manipulation is at the core of the algorithms I use for trading.
Great men who becaome wealthy through market prowess establish philanthropies. Have you not seen the Jack Hershey Institutes? Jack Hershey Foundations? Jack Hershey Hospitals? Jack Hershey Fellowships? Jack Hershey Internships? Jack Hershey Missions? Jack Hershey Shelters? Jack Hershey Scholarships? Jack Hershey university chairs? Jack Hershey Schools? Jack Hershey Parks? Shame on your ignorance!
As I said just above your most recent post, cynicism offers nothing but itself and similarly begets nothing but itself. It is the classic futile cycle - a dog chasing its tail. I agree completely that the market is totally manipulated but there are many who don't appreciate that fact. On the other hand, as you correctly note, there are many who do and they make their living off the falsity of a 'non-manipulated' market. The pox on them. It is not useful to simply hold one's nose at the smell of rotting flesh and putrescent lumps. One needs to address the problem so that it doesn't recur. In the past you have noted the efficacy of a #10 needle/large syringe combo. I on the otherhand prefer a #11 blade. To each his own. You state that you have means and ways of detecting and quantifying manipulation and I have no reason to doubt what you say and similarly no desire to know precisely what said methods are. If you find them to be of utility in your trading then more power to you. You would be the first to agree, is my guess, that they are not the only solution to the situation. Some of the beauty of a theory lies in the possibility of its destruction. If one is to partake of this mindset, then one must, in like fashion, be willing to have one's own theory similarly challenged and destroyed if appropriate conditions are found to exist. Otherwise one has just created a varaition on the theme of conventional wisdom and that, as we both know, is a bore. lj
Well, then, we shallagree to disagree about the value of cynicism. I have no choice in the matter, it's congenital, was pulled kicking and screaming out of the womb of a half-dead unwantedly-pregnant mother with forceps by a none-too-tender Navy physician (if he was even that), who then proceeded to cut off half my dick in the interest of genital hygeine. It still hurts.