"foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" -Emerson "some things are so foolish or ridiculous that you have to be an academic to believe them" -George Orwell those "amazingly specific" numbers are an educated guess on my part. it is the broader point that matters, not a numerical value. nitpick all you want, i don't care. if you want to side with a bunch of ivory tower jackasses who have stuck to the same dumb theory for decades just because they don't want to admit being wrong, be my guest. gosh Faster, call me crazy but it seems you like to argue just for the sake of arguing.
let us simply say that YOU have FAITH that the market is not random. faith requires no proof or reason. i think that sums things nicely.
"gosh Faster, call me crazy but it seems you like to argue just for the sake of arguing." not to argue with you again but we are here to discuss (argue) are we not? you need not reply to this, just an observation.
My account balance is all the proof i need. If you were a profitable trader you would have the same "faith" as I. Perhaps you are admitting here and now that you are not? Unless you try to wriggle out of it by saying it is possible to profit from randomness, in which case the point is moot anyway, because inability to profit is the entire raison d'etre of the random walker's argument. You can't win, faster. You can only snipe and gripe. Shoo fly, you bother me. p.s. blind faith and informed faith are two different things entirely. there is also a difference between constructive debate and silly mean spirited contentiousness. but i wouldn't expect you to make any valuable distinctions, you are too busy sniping.
OK dark, i'll go away. no need to get snippy. just offering up my thoughts. i'm done here. bye. ps watch my journal next week and decide for yourself whether i am profitable.
I guess the reason I use quotes of other traders is they have proven themselves efficient in their endeavors. Let's say you play golf and you want to learn how to play sand shots. Then me and Tiger Woods offer to give you lessons: And I say, don't pay any attention to Tiger, I wouldn't take any of his advice. Let me show you how to play sand shots. Well, you might appreciate my earnest, but I have a feeling you would take your lessons from Tiger. Why? Because he has "proven" that he knows what he's doing. And, most people would probably feel you made the "logical" choice.
darkhorse : "2. try to keep posts short like metooxxx" darkhorse : "Jaan: good idea, one twenty minute block of time seems like smart compromise" As Molly Shannon would say, I love it, I love it, I love it!
i should qualify my statements, i do think that the experiences of successful traders (eg. quotes provide by dark) as well as personal experience are relevant and meaningful. but i would just like to see all this a bit more sharply defined. probably won't see this in my lifetime though. good trading to you too dark and all.
a minor point: i think that, by most standards, between 1% and 5% is far from being astonishingly precise, because these numbers define a range. the precision of a range is measured in its (relative) length, not by the precision of its endpoints. put it this way, if i said an event has a probability between 0% and 100%, would you still call the numbers "0" and "100" "astonishingly precise"? - jaan