If you spell out questions, it'll be easier for me to give answers... what seems to be unclear in that?
I'd imagine that the most capable traders -- those who have an iron-clad grip on discipline, excellent patience, and an uncanny sense of timing -- are able to consistently take money out of the market purely on the movement of the tape, without the need for an explicitly laid out (programmable) signal; their black box is basically their own instinct, and the advantage is having the capability to sniff out recurring patterns while being flexible enough to handle variations in pattern "instances" (sorry, been playing around with flash mx lately ). Assuming you have a system and the discipline as you say, then I'd think you'd most likely be more capable than any computer in terms of tape-reading.
I agree. And the next natural step for such trader would be, IMO, to make his life easier by laying out those patterns he spotted and learned to exploit, then forming setups to trade on and making his trading simple "see recognizable setup - take the trade - set your stop - take profit or stop, whichever signalled first". See, it's nice to trade solely on what you listed... for a year, or two, or three. Then you find out (well, at least I did) that you simply risk to get burnt out by everyday's repeating of entire process. Big part of this process can be made automatic, pre-programmed, there is no need to do it over and over. You can formalize it, leaving way smaller part to your discretion (and yes, I am strong believer in discretionary trading despite having a system, those two do not necessary contradict each other). You systematize things that are the same and make them your system. Then you apply some amount of discretion to cherry-pick those of setups where your intuition is screaming. Bottom line is, if you trade ALL of the signals your system gives you, you still have positive expectancy. If your intuition is good, it allows you to increase your profits. That's where art and science meet, and trading, IMO, is a mix of both. Science part is easy and can be taught. Art part is more of grey area, it hardly can be taught directly but the student can be shown where and how to move. Then it's up to him to make it or not. It's the same as with psychology of trading - correct mindset can be described, shown, even tricks helping to get there can be explained - but eventually it comes to whether one makes all necessary steps or not.
Common practice. Large-scale buyers such as bookstores and libraries are notified well in advance of the release date for obvious reasons. Amazon makes this information available to the public so that they can reserve copies, though many will use this information to put books on hold at their local library (I'm on the hold list for a book that won't be released until November). Part of this, of course, is publicity, which is why the public knows the release dates for upcoming DVDs, some of which won't be released for months.
Yes, I understand obvious publicity part... I rather meant sale as offering the discount It seemed to me that the book (or anything else) should go at full price as it's released, then as time goes, discounts are applied. Announcing the sale before the book is published feels counterintuitive to me... but heck, art of selling probably has its rules
You'd think so, but Amazon changed all that. I still find it interesting that people will pay full price at a bookstore when they can walk across the street and get the same thing for near half-price at the grocery store, most recent example being the latest Harry Potter book. I'd imagine that the royalties don't come from hardbound sales but the paperback sales. And then there are the movie rights
Trying to imagine this movie... ... it all happened in quiet sleepy Daily Chart, on South Coast of Monitor. Small Stock lived there forever, leading slow respectable life of average volume, making his firm 10K shares a day, never experiencing Euphoric Spikes or Capitulatory Selloffs. Small Stock didn't know that he became a target of Slow Accumulation by big mean Market Maker. Acting accordingly to his evilish scenario, Market Maker started increasing Small Stock's volume. At first Small Stock was happy, as his gaining price looked as a sign of his success. He didn't face overwheight problem yet... Heck, I'll sell movie rights!! Anyone's up to write screenplay?