Head and shoulder patterns occur very often and they will conitnue to form and follow through because it is just how the supply and demand shapes the chart pattern. There are people in there playing the pattern as a 'system'. Breakouts occur all of the time and there are people playing those breakouts using a system. Now, take some specific indicator or numbers based system or any kind of exact measured type of value and when these exact values line up have enough people trading this to the point that it actually affects supply / demand and yes it can change the results of a 'system'. Try telling 10 people to trade with 1000 shares long when a 12,26,9 MACD closes above the zero line on a stock that trades 100,000 shares a day and I guarantee you that the sytem itself will not work after time and of course with more and more people knowing about it.
just look at the simple system for beginners thread. within 3 weeks of being shared, it went into the longest deepest famine in its history. it's staging a modest recovery, but the slope of the eq curve appears to have shifted heavily, coincident with it being posted
so we should imm fade a system when it goes public, psss... just don't let others know about this system.
Very good point. This is a good Example Trading System. Example of a profitable system and Example of how people will not follow it. As someone already said, give a perfectly good, simple, profitable system to 10 traders and maybe just a couple will actually follow it like it was meant to be.
I'm following this system and making nice money doing so. I did modify it a bit and trade IWM with it. My code is posted in the thread should anyone want to give it a try. DS
He probably means some other system, meant originally for ER2, the ORB type of system and not the system that was originally presented for YM in the thread 'Example Trading System'. The latter has been doing very well in February and had a small loss in January...
IMHO, if you're trading a very small OTC stock with an average volume of 1000 shares traded per day, then yeah, you shouldn't let anyone else know what you're planning on doing -- until after it's done -- but if you're trading oil, coffee, IBM, or the Euro, nobody knows and nobody cares about your system even if there are thousands trading it. You're not even a drop in the bucket. The big boys don't need to know your system. They will manage to hit your stops whether they know your system or not. And they're not trying to know the nuances of your "special" system. They can't possibly keep track of the 10 million different systems and variations out there; that would be a colossal waste of time and energy. They don't have any problem with you making money, as long as it doesn't get in the way of them making even more money. When you become a big fish and get on their radar (like Soros), then you have to start watching your back and putting orders in slowly through multiple agencies, and trying to fake the market out and strategic things like that. But that's when you're trading with real size, which will likely never happen. For now, don't worry about anything but developing a winning system. And please realize that nothing you or anyone else will ever create will be original. Every time I've ever come up with a cool new idea (or read somebody else's cool new idea), it turned out later that someone else already had it 30 years ago. "There is nothing new under the sun"... However, it's still a better legacy to write and popularize a cool indicator (Martini's %R?) and have millions worshipfully trust it and use it than to just be another struggling nobody who never made as much money as the dentist down the street who only works 3 weeks a month and never took a risk in his life that wasn't on a ski hill in Aspen. And a month after you come out with Martini's %R, someone here on ET will shock you with the fact that it's just a crippled stochastic and they'd been using it for years, but it will still make you rich and famous anyway, and you'll have a legacy that will live forever. I say if anybody has anything interesting, they should post it without fear. The community can either confirm it, improve it, or shoot it down. But if you think SaxoBank or Lehman Bros. are reading ET hoping to get "FuzzyPuppy69's Sup3r System" so they can sabotage it, well.... By the way, you better hope nobody else finds out about Bollinger Bands or they may stop working.
Depends on how you define "secret." If you refer to "magic," then I agree with you. However, if you refer to proprietary trading methods, then I would disagree. And I think that very few people would share their proprietary trading methods with others...while those methods are still working. I certainly wouldn't. Perhaps you would like to share?
RFLOL cable my point exactly. BTW Bollinger is a very nice guy and BBs are as good an indiactor as there is.