I'm just fed up reading his endless posts that are confusing and always give me a headache. Why does everything have to be so convoluted and confusing? This is what I mean... lets say your point is try to cut your losses short. Jack will take this simple point and spin it around. Of course the point of cutting your losses short is important.. but the spin and jargon he uses is amazing. I spoke to many top traders... read all the market wizard books.. no pro's ever think like Jack.. or would even understand what the hell he is talking about. I would be my bottom dollar Jack is a complete BS artist... every single top trader I know or read about.. thinks in logical and reasonable terms.. unlike Jack's.
there is an unusual phenomena that surfaces in the financial markets, jack and t. murray of murray math, are prime examples. i find this fascinating. i call it " the cult of plain talking jibberers"--- these individuals seem to attain guru like status by inventing a strange type of "pig" english when speaking about simple market truths. there are 6-7 of these people who have quite a following. is it the "mad genius" angle that their followers are drawn to ? i am really not sure yet, but am in the process of researching and discussing this with several others far more knowledgeable than i in the psychological aspect for a forthcoming published piece. stay tuned, surfer
Wash trades happen before you get to protection provided by stops. A person exits using four ranked priorities: 1. to maximize profits. 2. To reverse into a starting trend in order to be on the correct tack. Tack is a sailing word; check it out if you are unfamiliar with it: they are done into and with the wind so expect some cunfusion at first. 3. to not have a loss but breakeven when your intention is not being fulfilled. 4. Being stopped out by not managing things appropriately. When a stop takes you out, it happens because you are asleep at the switch. Stop logs are lists of potential stops. They are important as a learning tool with respect to price formations. All movement and all non movement is a result of the active decisions and actions of buyers and sellers as pairs. These things bunch. Groups of trades happen in clusters rather than a constant streaming of variation. The P,V relation describes this and all price groupings provide formations. You can look at bars, cnadlesticks, renko, three line break, kagi, etc. Any way you see values attendant to the bounds of formations. People cause these. To start learn to list. To determine which value to use do tow things. Write out a C&R list of times for action. Then as you determine the pace of the market (Use slow, medium and fast to start) keep track of he stop to be used. For slow use four entries back and circle it, for medium use three values back, for fast use two values back. Circle them so you have a value at all times on tap. Stop logs do other things too. They are like bugs going under leaves before it rains when you are on the trail. As the trend pace changes (lets slow it for example) you see formation sets changing. You see that the rate of additions of potential stops slows. You then see retracement of the last value to a prior value. (I erase these). You see repeated retracements and few new values, you see no new values within your C&R time spacing. Your weasel ears prick up; this is no tripe!!!! Actually you are witnessing the end of a trend using your stop log. What happens is that the price is going to run into your stop. Well do the weasel rock, get out ahead of the stop for more profits, slalom into the congestion. and find poiint 1 of the next trend.
Jack writes in another thread regarding position sizing..... "What is the rate of growth of the increase in your capitalization as just realted to your cited method and how frequently do you have break points for each given rate of growth are they discretely increase? Just roughly speaking as a reflection over the years." I rest my case! Or am I just stupid and dont undertand what he trying to say? What does this have to do with position sizing?? Can someone come here and defend the Guru or even interpret this "scholarly" advise? --MIKE
I am happy to read some of the "translations" of Jack's messages. Lost me completely in the first few posts. Makes it easy for us "simple folk"
Trend channels are easy to do. they are explained all over the place by now. Here you get to see what's ahead. you will see that your stop log gives you a discrete set of points along the right line. Viola!! we have reinforcement here. bollinger move over. You can put in C&R time ticks too so you know when they are coming up. All this calibrates you. I am dissappointed that the cub scouts only includes wolves, bears, lions, oaks, etc. A calibrated weasel is invincable. with the channel and its second point 3 adjustment you can get more profits out of trends. By watching the stop log purr away, you get to see ahead as the price begins to fail to make more new formation values. If you like you can set up nice candlestick sequences for this as well. as in pgysics thing tend to continue as is until something new enter to change the venue. the channel tells you where the boundaries are of the playing field and the pace is told to you by C&R frequency and the stop log chugs along really demanding your steady monitoring. This is priceless almost.
I am not too focussed here since you can choose anything and it will work. There may be some threads on this in ET. I'm not sure as yet.
Reminds me of people who gloss themselves, come up with mystical theories, and are evasive when asked directly to explain things. Bottom line is track record, isn't it? If Jack's published and documented track record is good, and with real money, and if he has demonstrated the ability to pass his technology of trading onto others at a rate of success that is more than just random luck, then there is something to him. Reading Jack Hershey is difficult, because of the lack of flow and intelligibility of such simple concepts. Reading Immanual Kant is difficult, because his level of thought was so precise and profound, and the material so deep and beyond the grasp of most commen men. Kant dealt in the pure abstract nature of the mind and philosophy. Jack is dealing with trading, which as we all know is not philophical, but just a method of extracting money from the markets. People try to emulate real thinkers by their vagueness, non sequiturs, and unusual and unconventional ideas in an attempt to create the aura of sophistication and intelligence. Having spent days reading just a page of Kant, and finally understanding the concepts he is putting forth, is much different than spending days trying to understand Hershey and coming to the conclusion that he is just a wacko. This aint theorhetical or ivory tower trading, this is the real deal we are participating in. For those who are unfamiliar with Kant, here is an excerpt: All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labour, namely, when, instead of one man doing everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of work distinct from others in the treatment it requires, so as to be able to perform it with greater facility and in the greatest perfection. Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism. It might deserve to be considered whether pure philosophy in all its parts does not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it would not be better for the whole business of science if those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed in all sorts of proportions unknown to themselves, and who call themselves independent thinkers, giving the name of minute philosophers to those who apply themselves to the rational part only- if these, I say, were warned not to carry on two employments together which differ widely in the treatment they demand, for each of which perhaps a special talent is required, and the combination of which in one person only produces bunglers. But I only ask here whether the nature of science does not require that we should always carefully separate the empirical from the rational part, and prefix to Physics proper (or empirical physics) a metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthropology a metaphysic of morals, which must be carefully cleared of everything empirical, so that we may know how much can be accomplished by pure reason in both cases, and from what sources it draws this its a priori teaching, and that whether the latter inquiry is conducted by all moralists (whose name is legion), or only by some who feel a calling thereto. As my concern here is with moral philosophy, I limit the question suggested to this: Whether it is not of the utmost necessity to construct a pure thing which is only empirical and which belongs to anthropology? for that such a philosophy must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty and of the moral laws. Everyone must admit that if a law is to have moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the precept, "Thou shalt not lie," is not valid for men alone, as if other rational beings had no need to observe it; and so with all the other moral laws properly so called; that, therefore, the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason; and although any other precept which is founded on principles of mere experience may be in certain respects universal, yet in as far as it rests even in the least degree on an empirical basis, perhaps only as to a motive, such a precept, while it may be a practical rule, can never be called a moral law.