Today was example where my confidence based betting hurt me. I had 3-4 wins today at normal and small size. I was up about 6/10ths percent. 6/10ths percent per day would equate to a return of approximately 144% per year. This would also only be making $120 per day on a 20k account! But, I sized larger on a bad trade near the end of the day. I didn't lose the maximum on it. In fact, I came close to losing the maximum but was able to close it out at a best price. The net result was today was break even. That trade should have been a small trade. Even with a strong edge, trading results are rather random. I really hate to lose because 1 bad trade can ruin several good trades. The greater return one makes then the greater hurdle that one must clear before they leave the random area. If I'm sizing normal/light,that is risking about .5% to .6% per day on average, then I need to clear about 3% before I clear the "random hurdle". But, when I'm trying to clear 1% per day ($1,000 per day) then I need to clear about $8,000 before I feel I've cleared the random hurdle. This is just based on my feeling. it might be 3k and 5k. But, it is for sure quite high. Some people try to avoid the bad trades. This is a never ending trap that leads no where. The solution I've adopted is to win more on my best trades. It might be a little more or a lot more. But, I always want to be winning at least a little something extra. I, also, size conservatively on trades that I'm not as confident about. I take these trades because they are sorta like the R&D department. If I didn't take them then I wouldn't learn how well they worked and I wouldn't be gaining experience. At worst, I'd be sitting on the sideline and then see my trade idea come to fruition and be tempted to jump in at worst time. Overloading the boat... I've often been tempted to load the boat especially after I seen the idea work previously. This is very dangerous. It also isn't as effective as one would think. Loading the boat on a trade for me would be making 5% or so. This would be huge. However it is still only 5%. My best months I've made over 26%. I'd need to load the boat quite often. Yes, I bet more when I'm confident but I try not to overload the boat. On Tight Stops Likewise, some traders try to set tight stops and wait for just the right time. I've tried that game too and it doesn't work for my personality. The biggest runners never retrace which means no entry. And, often when they do retrace the move is over. I often enter a small position just to test the waters. Value of Winning I've found that winning is very useful. If I make a brilliant trade and win x dollars then it is still x dollars. It is no more then if I made several okay trades that made money. This is why my hedge style is so powerful when it works because even if I'm losing on 1 side of the trade then I'm closing out profits. Those "dumb profits" can make a difference. I've held back on hedge style in recent market because I've had a hard time making it work. But, it offers a nice promise.
A little more insight into my secretive hedge trading style.. I'm sharing this because I haven't got my hedge style to work yet and because much of the information is in the public domain or published here under some other journals. Take the ES and a correlated instrument. Let's say you wanted spread the ES against another future, say the NQ, you could plot a spread of these instruments. You go long one and short the other when the spread deviates more then normal, say X standard deviations. However, this misses the beauty of the method. If you look at NQ/ES as interchangeable then you can effectively go long and short ES and ES_1 at different prices thereby creating an arbitrage opportunity. In reality, this is very difficult to do. The main idea though is like g-bot: the automated bot with the clones. I haven't actually downloaded it but got some ideas from it and other sources. Let's say you are in a trade, let's say short ES, and the trade isn't working out. Wouldn't be nice if you could also take new long trade setups while the existing trade isn't working thereby booking closed profits? Of, course you can't because you can't be long/short same instrument. It would be very complicated to manage. This is where your ES_1 instrument comes in. So, basically, you let the trade that isn't working out take some heat while booking closed profits in ES_1. If you can book closed profits in ES_1 fast enough AND close your bad position in ES with a small loss then you will make money even if the first trade went bad. In reality, this is extremely difficult to pull off. Part of the difficulty comes from fact that I will typically vary my weighting to weight the side that is more likely to work. This requires extreme concentration. The idea of executing on new cloned instrument might make it easier to execute. One could even calculate/translate to display the clone instrument in pricing terms of current. This could be beneficial. The difficulty also comes from deciding how far to let the bad trade run before closing it. If the market really trends strong then it will be difficult to close enough profits to keep up with the losses. This method can work well when the market is mostly range bound. --------- I think there is something "missing" from my method. I'm not sure what exactly is missing. It might be that for this method to really shine requires that one hold position for a few days, i.e keep a book. It might be that one needs to automate the scalping side to generate profits faster then one can generate manually. It might be the nature of the instruments one selects for ES_1 and ES_2 or that one needs to go out to maybe 3 or 4 instruments. Lots of ideas...
I can't decide if this journal is genius troll publicity for your systems or if you really are as dumb as you sound.
bagger: I have you on ignore so that I don't have to read your trolling posts. But, I logged in with another computer and seen the stuff you were writing. First, you are nothing but a troll and a harasser. You will never be the trader that I am. I seriously don't believe anything you claim about anything that you've did with your attitude, either. I will not see your reply because you're on ignore. My record speaks for itself and my record is among the strongest in tracked records. That's a fact. I don't talk about my services here because I've been requested not too. And, some of the vendors here have complained. There is no conspiracy. I have nothing against people selling stuff and have never claimed that. What I've railed against are rainbow merchants who offer various services without offering any evidence of what those services are worth. First, I don't believe any of those vendors could even produce 20% per year returns. But, regardless, I've railed against them because it is not rational to buy a product that has no evidence of its benefit. For example, a vendor says he will offer mentoring. Okay let's give him the benefit of the doubt and he's a really committed trainer. Great. But, there is no way for me to even know if I'd be interested in his methods without knowing how much capital they required, the risk involved in using them, and the historical returns. No one is guaranteed to make a given return -- we know that. That's not under dispute. But, if a vendor's returns had poor risk/adjusted metrics or poor net returns then I could exclude that vendor. My point has always been clear that I'm strongly against the lies that are propagated. I'm a champion of thought! You copy/pasted stuff from my website. This was also posted at my site and makes my philosophy clear: >>What makes you different then all the other market services that want my >>money? You see, I make quantified calls. I've been putting my neck on the line for 6 months and winning. Other market gurus will hide behind vague language, double talk, and flat out lies. I've had my market calls audited by Collective2.com @ my REDACTED. That's really all the difference in the world. I don't know any other decision support service that does that. I don't believe anything anybody claims! I put it to the test. Ask any of the other gurus for an audited record. They will always make an excuse. They don't have any real talent. No ability. You see they can't read the market. They don't understand it or even care. They just want to sell anything. To be very clear, if anyone is bringing transparency to their trading. I have done it. Literally every trade I've took over past 3 years is available for inspection. The whole enchilada. What did Don Miller do to bring transparency to trading? He made a claim. No proof. No audited statements. No long term history. Nothing. I'm everything about honesty, about truth and always will be. Everyone who reads my journal knows that I don't have a lot of capital. Everyone knows that I like to make money. Everyone who bought my report knew I was a paper trader and everyone was satisfied. A big part of my lobbying effort has been against the services who sell their services to traders with tiny accounts and claims of great riches. I've asked these vendors to show some evidence of what they claim. Some of these vendors make up spreadsheets. BS I say. I want to see something tangible. And, that's what I've did. I'm really against that type of BS. The type where a vendor says he can't produce a record or the alphabet soup club would punch his lights out. But, oh yeah he can claim that you can do 100k per year on a 5k account. Yeah right... Yes, I've a system that can be traded with a small account at high risk and yes it has historically produced anywhere from 50% to 120% per year. That's not 10x returns. And, yes I plan to dedicate about 2k-3k to system and take every trade with no system stop loss. I'm very genuine and my ideals are simple and a straightforward... back to my focus on winning...
Some people talk and talk and talk and talk... and scarcely sit back and observe. That's what I think every time I click on this thread. I'm pretty sure I could say in a paragraph what you do in 1 page. My mom told me ever since I was a baby I just like to observe, and even when I was getting poked in the ass with dozens of needles I just stared at the nurses & docs.
Blah blah blah you are just a typical snake oil salesman. You claim to be the best ever but you have only been pretending to trade for less than 2 years. In fact up until then you were focused on selling some crap software with typical slimeball patterns: 1. Vague reference to winning "awards" 2. Always using the term "we" like if you talk that way it makes it so that you aren't a single operator running a "business" out of your bedroom. From your old site: "Ideas, Design, Custom Programming We are not just known as the software company that focuses on great productivity enhancing software with an emphasis on design. We also help you design and improve your own products. We offer a wealth of development services for companies and individuals including concept design, user interface review, program review, custom programming, developer graphics (icons, interfaces), and web development. Our core focus is on designing concepts, improving interfaces, reviewing and improving programs, and Windows programming. I have over 10 years of professional programming experience and have programmed extensively in .NET, C#, MFC, and VB.NET. We do focus on user interface improvements and non programming aspect too. We are fully eager to work with shareware developers and smaller software companies. Our rates are very competitive and we are eager to help you succeed with your next software project! We are experienced in working virtually and comfortable in that fully. Please contact us at sales or support and we will find a solution! Curtis White NewTab Owner" If you are not a liar why not post some sort of evidence that you were a "we" and not a one man bedroom operation. Obviously irrelevant to your current snake oil operation but it does help establish your pattern of dishonesty. Or how about the awards your software won? GhostClip is the award winning tabbed notepad with popup via hot keys, transparency, always on top, and autopaste clipboard. ¡Display Cheat Sheets ¡Always On Top ¡Tabbed Interface ¡Hotkeys for instant hide or show Only 21.95! http://web.archive.org/web/20091009023651/http://www.ghostclip.com/home.html
Since you can't brag as much as you would like here without getting in trouble let me do it for you. Welcome, Who is the Market Predictor? Curtis White I'm a software engineer and web developer by profession with certification and specialization in Microsoft .NET technolgoies. I've been predicting the market with a high degree of accuracy for about 2 years and studied it in some form for the past 5 years. I've had the last 6 months of both my calls and my trades audited at Collective2 and my prior calls were emailed to a select individual. I focus and specialize on the 2 day to 2 week direction but can anticipate market moves in all time frames. My method is discretionary but I develop and backtest trading strategies and systems to guide me. What is this site? It takes a lot of work to predict the market. I have to study, share, study, on a regular basis to keep getting better. I need to reach out to other traders, analyst, system developers, professional traders, and those who recognize and value what I do and can help me to keep getting better. This is all about strenghtening my feedback loops and each other. Are you a guru? Hardly, first my record is much stronger than any guru. All kidding aside, I've learned from some of the best traders around. Most of the material I learned from is freely or cheaply available. But it takes years of effort and work for it to be useful. Really though, I stand (and fall?) on the shoulder of giants. My "book mentors" over the years have been Gary Smith of "How I Trade For A Living", Dr. Brett Steenbarger, George Soros, Rob Hanna, and others. In other words, I've internalized the way some of these market experts view the markets and internalized it into my own, entirely unique way of looking at markets. And, this is a continual process. The market likes to kick the proud in the gut. As Smith said, the time I think I'm better then the average joe will be the time I should be worried. Who should subscribe and why should they? This site even though it is called "The Market Predictor" is not just about me. You see it is about you and me. It is about helping us to win. First, if you are a swing trader then you'll get some great directional calls. If you are a day trader you can use my directional outlook as a powerful bias indicator. Just one of my calls could pay for a year subscription, and I'm calling the market on a regular basis. What makes you different then all the other market services that want my money? You see, I make quantified calls. I've been putting my neck on the line for 6 months and winning. Other market gurus will hide behind vague language, double talk, and flat out lies. I've had my market calls audited by Collective2.com @ my predictor.collective2.com. That's really all the difference in the world. I don't know any other decision support service that does that. I don't believe anything anybody claims! I put it to the test. Ask any of the other gurus for an audited record. They will always make an excuse. They don't have any real talent. No ability. You see they can't read the market. They don't understand it or even care. They just want to sell anything. What will I get? What is your methodology? My calls are based on my proprietary methodology which is a combination of my strong intuition, sentiment, quantifed trading systems, and my very own brand of techncial analysis. I'll try to make at least 1 call per week but can't guarantee it. I'll provide you superior insight into the market. But let's get down to it: I'll give you a directional call that can help you to profit. That's really all that matters. You'll also get an update of how my mechanical signals are doing, and we'll share and learn insights into their inner workings too. I'll be adding more as we progress. You'll get the calls, proprietary market analysis and what I'm looking at, and hopefully we'll do some videos. I may even offer my opinion on a trade of yours. I'll provide tags for each signal so that you can choose what calls interest you. What you will get: (* tentative) ⢠Market Updates/Predictions: These are my "market calls" where I provide the 2 day direction going forward. Non members will only get delayed calls with no additional analysis. You will get the calls immediately when I make them with extra value added analysis. ⢠Original trade ideas: You'll get some of my speculative, experimental, and original trade ideas. These can be a great way to get out of a slump. ⢠Proprietary analysis: You'll get my "view" into the market of how I call the market. So, you can learn to pay attention to what is important and moving or going to be moving the market. ⢠Twitter alerts: I'll be providing key insights via twitter alerts. These will help you to hone in what is moving the market and what you should be looking at. ⢠Video analysis: I'll provide a value enriching video analysis of some of the proprietary types of things that I look at when making a decision. ⢠Educational: I'll be sharing my market studies and other educational material as time goes on. ⢠Discounts: As a member, you'll get discounts on any future mechanical trading systems, subscriptions, educational services, and discounts on my service "My Take: Your trade". ⢠Community & Sharing: I want the members to help, contribute, and give back. We'll look into ways to do this. This a sure thing? Nope! Every trade can go against you and trading is very risky. The past performance of my calls and of my systems may not be indicative going forward. On a chart, you see the left hand side but not the right. The right is invisible. Nobody truly knows the future! I just try to go with my best sense of the odds and work hard at my craft. It has worked so far, and I expect to continue to do well. Where do I sign up and how much will it cost? Watch this space. For the introduction, everything is completely free. The cost will probably be around $100 per month. This rate will only be available to individuals and independent professionals. If you are a hedge fund, proprietary trading desk, or institional investor then contact me directly for rate. Thanks.
In other words, I've internalized the way some of these market experts view the markets and internalized it into my own, entirely unique way of looking at markets. And, this is a continual process. The market likes to kick the proud in the gut. As Smith said, the time I think I'm better then the average joe will be the time I should be worried. Irony??? Lol.
Lucias, since you have this guy on ignore it's hard to ignore how well he has you pegged. I guess when one can't trade with real money one resorts to making a name for themselves as a snake oil salesman. At least you are getting noticed and that is what all snake oil salesmen want - be it for the better or in your case for the worse.
bagger.. still trolling Nothing was relevant or worthwhile that you wrote except this statement that I made: >>As Smith said, the time I think I'm better then the average joe will be the time I >>should be worried. To which you replied "irony". Yes, the winning mind state is indeed an ironic state of mind. First, I wouldn't trade if I didn't think I was going to win. If I don't step into the "pit" strong then I've already lost. Yet, I must also be willing to admit when I'm wrong. I mean think about some of the ironic things traders say: Trade what you see not what you think: This basically says stay with the trend or the market will keep doing what it was recently doing. Yet, what it is doing is based on where you measure it from. The market is never wrong: The market is never wrong implies the market is always priced properly. If the market is always priced properly then there is no profit to be made from trading. Price pays: Does "price" pay or does being right pay? --------- Okay, the truth is that I'm a lot better then the average joe. That's the truth. My abilities are probably right up with the best of the market wizards, if not more so. So, yes that's true. And it is important to respect that for me, to be strong. But what's this notion that I'm getting, its not the notion of ability. Its the notion of secrets. Its the notion of secret knowledge. Its the idea that I KNOW something that sets me apart. That's what I'm getting at. I think that's the distinction that resolves the irony. Making this clear tells me that I need to be wary of believing I've found some secret knowledge. A good example was when I discovered the after hours market for the first time. I thought that was a "secret" and wanted to get in there and trade during those after hours periods when I really didn't have a reason too.