Hi Jack, I've been trading for 10 years and profitable for the last 4. I have read about beliefs from different books on psychology from Mark Douglas, Ari Kiev and Van Tharp. People are limited by their beliefs which I believe to be correct. Beliefs act as a filter for the mind and prevent the mind from being in the now moment. When I first started trading, I believed I could turn 5k into 1 million in a year like all new traders. That would be a Positive belief as you would classify it. Just because I believe in it does not make it possible though. I said I don't believe anyone can consistently capture 3x the ATR everday. You said this was a Negative belief which denies people from being successful. It may be somewhat a limiting belief but in no way does it deny anyone from being successful. There are many traders that capture a fraction of the daily range making good money. I don't care about money, I just care about making trades when I have an edge. I don't need to capture 3x or even 2x the ATR to be a successful trader. I do agree with some of your points and applaud you for trying to help others become successful. Someone who believes he knows everything has a closed mind to new possible ideas. I would love to eliminate this limiting belief but it would require someone like you to give a live demo. Please give ET a live demo and shatter this common belief that multiples of the ATR are not possible. I would be equally impressed if you could capture 2x the ATR. jsmith
gov, Here is a quicky for you. Take an interval during the market where the market sentiment changes with out any price change. I am in the market always. I measure the sentiment inter bar and intra bar. as you would imagine one changes more often than the other and the sequence of change is there to see as well. What am I to do? The market dictates. Because the market dictates and even though the price has not changed, I must comply. I comply to be on the "right" side of the market. My reversal using a market order or a sieries of market orders, depending upon the market pace (which is very small during no price change). Because I front run, I necessarily trade at market. All of these issues and concerns add up to the fact that I am penalized the spread as I trade. In ES this is small and usually the minimum. For me there is never a choice because the market dictates and I share responsibilities with the market. What did I lsoe to be able to stay on the right side of the market under conditions where sentiment changed during a period of no price change? My loss is the spread. Many people have observed this who have watched me or spyder in real time with real money in real markets. At the demo in the MERC building, this was something that was discussed later. On the floor and elsewhere today, experienced traders do NOT like to give up the spread. It is a badge of honor to scalp out of a trade by at least making the spread and a couple of ticks. To step out of the conventional orthodoxy to make a multiple of the H-L daily, takes some courage for such seasoned traders. I always sacrifice the spread to be on the right side of the market. I used to suggest drills to people as a conditioning exercise to break ingrown bad habits. I posted a day's trading once to illustrate the trading of a beginner. He was required in my account or his account, whichever we were trading, to do several wash trades a day. They showed on the trading. This drill got him used to the idea that any entry could be "washed" without a loss. For the matter of doing what is required when sentiment is changing, I plan on taking a loss of the spread in order to be on the right side of the market. If I am trading under range bound conditions, sometimes there is a need to reverse sides of the market as sentiment fluctuates. The bottom line on making money is to be positioned at all times to extract what is offered. There is a lot offered on a daily basis. as you can see in this thread, what the market is offerring is unknown to most people. That is the way it is for the trading population. The minority controls the markets and I front run the minority. Elsewhere the was a quant paper (working) referred to. It dealt with making money and big blocks going through the market. It was shown that big blocks did not move the markets. The paper did not address what moves markets. Why didn't it? I suppose that was because the PI and his crew were focussed on what big blocks do not do. My focus is being in the markets and on the right side at all times; occasionally, I have to give up the spread to regain the right side. These are occasions where I show a print with a loss of the spread as I shift to front run the coming trend as expressed by the sentiments I measure. It is a drill to me to get on the right side just as doing wash trades is a drill to understand that you do not have to lose money mostly ever. The conclusions you are drawing may be based upon those who are not very knowledgable nor skilled with respect to my practices. Your comment that I am full of shit is too bad for you. You are, by choice, passing up the opportunity of a lifetime as you will find out by the end of 2007. The market offers more than 3 times ATR every day. Do you think someone is not making that offering? It is very basic that someone is making the offering and someone is losing the offering. You may think the wins and losses are divided among a lot of people in one portion or another. The fact is that many people are highly leveraged as they trade and some of those people are in the markets all of the time. A fewer number still are in the markets all of the time and are able to time their trades. I can assure you that when very knowledgable people witness an excellent trading strategy, they get the message very promptly. You have not had the experience. You may never make an effort at the very least, to get the experience. If you ever do, I can guarantee to you that you will not be able to sleep during the night right after you have had the experience. One of your emotional feelings will be "Why have I wasted some many______(fill in the blank) years thinking the way I do!!!" that is the fun of doing a demo. I get to see a lot of sleepy heads the next few days. There are two things I have lost track of: how many times I've been to Paris and how many life time trusts I have created for adult handicapped people. I do remember the first one was in 1960; it was the same year I flew on a super connie from NYC to Gander to Shannon to Paris (TWA).
It would certainly be interesting to see a live demo. If you can do it for the Merc why not do it here and bring to an end this endless friggin debate. Personally I see no reason why a person cannot be in the market all the time. Market makers do it. What is tiresome is the endless threads calling attention to this debate.
it only takes a couple of sentences to fully understand the amount of mystical nonsense behind jack's rationale.
Your observation about market makers (and their profits levels, if you care to) is poignant. Watching these market makers is possible any time as well. Check out the chat room anytime and you can also review the transcripts and a chart to see how the calls are done.
My rationale does have a backside. It is correct that a person can go around to the other side and take a look. I regard sentiment on two levels and I find that this is productive. a close second to this is the drift of fair value since many arbs use this as a scalping trigger. generally this all go in on the same side of the drift presuming a correction will come. A am sure the mystical things that I am observing are strange and unheard of. but they do allow me to front run what is called the CO. price becomes static during some noticable times of the day. by looking at the dissappearance of inter bar sentiment I (have a major advantage in that I can "see" when it returns. Often this is a factor in the early PM when settlement is coming up. as settlement time passes and the sentiment is returning I am able to deal with BO's by being on the right side of the BO before it occurs. Often there is a failure of trand after a BO and that is important to front run as well. Many peoiple do early exits and scalp because of their accumulated fears of having poor timing. What you chose to pick out from my post is an indicator of where you are in the infinite scheme of things. That is the way it is for you at this point.
I made a few posts before this one. If you have 20 or 30 questions make a list and I will answer them for you. Your judgements on my commentary is something that you own. you also get the consequences. I would recommend that you get around to taking what I say seriously. It can make you very rich. And it can happen very quickly. Imagine using 20 ES contrcts and making three times the daily H-L range daily. Now, recognize that so far in your life you are denying that benefit to your self. You are making a bad choice so far.
You are the biggest dumb ass on ET with your 3x ATR methodology. Do you really believe what you write? Are you dreaming, take another bite of that Hershey bar and end it.