Psychology, are you sure?

I'll ask Whisky for some rice recipes, for you and only you (don't give any to Ugo), when he comes tonight to drink MY sake.

 

and while you're at it ask him to teach how to act around other human beings. Apparently your mother didn't get around to that.

 

Apparently Whisky's mother didn't do much of a good job either.

But we can't consider you human right?.

You come from Mount Olympus and you are a trading god or something. No?.

Since you had me on "ignore", it has now being "confirmed" that you are, also, a pathological liar, with an ostrich complex. (head in the sand and all that).

I think that the glauber salts we had you on, have failed to do their job. "We" are changing your regimen to a double dose of Castor Oil, for your persistent constipation, and since you brought family into the discussion, we'll be limiting your visits to once per quarter, down from once a month, at least till your flatulence subsides, and all the shit comes out of you. (Your mother complained on her last visit to your cage...err..."professional office").

 

and I would say further that at the mental institution where you reside, they probably don't allow alcoholic beverages.

Now I am going out to have breakfast, and you be sure to continue with you drug induced commentary while I am gone..

Bye bye

 

You can't have breakfast till you are fed.

See ya.

 

Ok, regarding automated trading, discretionary trading and their relationship to psychology, I've finally found a way to put it all together.

1) Automated consists of univocal rules and in this sense psychology does not matter.

2) Discretionary by definition must have at least a part of "discretionary" decisions, which means choices made by intuition, instinct, improvisation. The importance of psychology will be proportional to how "discretionary" a discretionary method is. But no matter how important psychology will be in achieving profitability, a knowledge of the market will always be needed and therefore an unprofitable trader cannot only look for the psychological causes of unprofitability. In other words trading isn't "all about psychology", as some say.

For example, in many cases, he will mistakenly think that not using a stoploss and incurring in a loss is a psychological problem, whereas he will forget that in other instances he made money because of not using that same stoploss, and that is why this time he was skeptical about using it. So it is only a psychological problem in the sense that he doesn't realize that a rule that can have exceptions is not a rule, that the stoploss is not a rule for his method (and maybe that he doesn't even have a method). The problem centers around this: how many "univocal" rules do we really have in our discretionary system? A rule that can be broken is not a rule, a rule that can have exceptions is not a rule, and therefore we can't blame lack of discipline for a loss due to breaking that (non) rule. And a method that doesn't have at least one non-breakable rule is not a method. Then, if we have no univocal rules, and therefore no method (except "instinct"), our type trading is the most dependent on psychology - but still it is not entirely about psychology, because even if we don't state via rules our knowledge on the markets, it will influence our instinct, and it will be needed to be profitable.

Unfortunately, in discretionary trading there is no way to measure exactly how much your unprofitability is due to psychology and how much it is due to your lack of knowledge of the markets.

 

that was well put Travis, sorry to read this so late!

 

How would you start building automated systems? (assuming a decent programming background)

 

well, I'd buy Perry Kaufman's books (New trading systems and methods and Smarter Trading) and start using tradestation...

 

Interesting some are not sure whether or not psychology should be an emphasis in their trading or not... that maybe explains the reasoning why the same people keep posting on this thread.