Random Chart Contest: RESULTS!

Hello everyone,

It is time to announce the answers for the random chart contest held this past week. (I know, I am a little later than I promised) The original thread is located here for your reference:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11578&perpage=6&pagenumber=1

The Charts

Here is the breakdown of the real and random charts:

Chart#1 – Random
Chart#2 – Random
Chart#3 – Motorola (MOT) April 1993 to May 1994
Chart#4 – 3M, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (MMM) April 1992 to July 1993
Chart#5 – Autodesk (ADSK) July 1990 to September 1991
Chart#6 – Random
Chart#7 – Random
Chart#8 – Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) February 1993 to June 1994
Chart#9 – Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ-30/DJIA) June 1984 to August 1985
Chart#10 – Random


Like I promised (even though I have the feeling some of you doubted ) there was no trickery involved. You can check the real charts for yourself.

Average Performance

Here is the average number correct among all participants for each chart:

Chart#1 – 62.50%
Chart#2 – 50.00%
Chart#3 – 68.75%
Chart#4 – 62.50%
Chart#5 – 68.75%
Chart#6 – 81.25%
Chart#7 – 50.00%
Chart#8 – 68.75%
Chart#9 – 75.00%
Chart#10 – 62.50%

It seems that there was something obvious about chart #6 that made it very easy to see that it was random. It also seems that the DJIA was the easiest real chart to pick out. (as I suspected it would be) On average the participants chose more correctly than incorrectly. Whether this is due to the skill of the participants or to the fact that my charts were not a perfect representation of randomness I do not know. (I used a crude method for creating the charts, had I known about brownian motion at the time I would have tried to use it for the generation of the charts. As dottom pointed out my charts are more representative of a “drunkards walk” than a true random walk)

Participant Rankings

Now for the ranking of participants:

Quiet1 was the only participant to get 100% correct, here are the rankings for all the participants:

1. Quiet1—10 Correct
   Analysis Method: n/a
   Years of Experience: 4
   
2. Gordon Gekko—9 Correct
   Analysis Method: eye
   Years of Experience: 4
   
3. JPB—9 Correct
   Analysis Method: eye
   Years of Experience: 4
   
4. alain—9 Correct
   Analysis Method: eye
   Years of Experience: 6
   
5. Glitch—9 Correct
   Analysis Method: eye
   Years of Experience: n/a
   
6. Traden4Alpha—8 Correct
   Analysis Method: autocorrelation study of H-L range
   Years of Experience: n/a
   
7. MondoTrader—8 Correct
   Analysis Method: eye
   Years of Experience: n/a
   
8. maxpi—7 Correct
   Analysis Method: n/a
   Years of Experience: 3
   
9. marketsurfer—6 Correct
   Analysis Method: N/A
   Years of Experience: 12
   
10. acrary—6 Correct
    Analysis Method: eye
    Years of Experience: 14
    
11. GreenTea—6 Correct
    Analysis Method: eye
    Years of Experience: 0.5
    
12. dottom—5 Correct
    Analysis Method: Digital Signal Processing
    Years of Experience: n/a
    
13. Tsaimoto—5 Correct
    Analysis Method: eye
    Years of Experience: 6
    
14. daytr8r—4 Correct
    Analysis Method: n/a
    Years of Experience: 7
    
15. bobcathy1—2 Correct
    Analysis Method: n/a
    Years of Experience: n/a
    
16. macal425—1 Correct
    Analysis Method: n/a
    Years of Experience: n/a
    [/list=1]
    
    Final Thoughts
    
    Well I think this was a fun exercise. I hope it proved to be educational or at least amusing to everyone who participated.
    
    If anyone has any thoughts or comments, lets hear them!
    
    If there is enough interest maybe we can do a contest like this again in the future, only a bit more realistically. I will be doing some research on Brownian motion and random walk simulation (I'm not trained in mathematics, so I don't absorb this kind of stuff very quickly ) in order to try and put together a more realistic simulation. If anyone has any suggestions or comments please let me know.
    
    Regards,
    John

 

I'm quite suprised to get them all right because I did feel several were close calls.

It was fun and instructive - thanks to John for putting the work in.

In case anyone PMs me for my "secret method". There wasn't one - I just looked at the charts as they were first presented. Where I was uncertain on a chart I looked closely at how the congestion/support/resistance areas developed, where they developed and how they ended. But even saying that makes it sound more complicated than it was in reality.



Q1

 

Quiet1, do you use Murray Math?

LOL... j/k...

congrats Quite1....

My answer was all True so it was fun...

 

I didn't know what you meant by Murray math until I went to that thread and saw all that ugly mouth froth.

Eh, no I use only price.

That said, what I really do is think about who is moving money in/out the market when, where and why.

For me trading is like paper/scissors/rock - its supposedly random but if you meld into your opponents mind you can have an edge.

Q1

 

hey, that was fun ! 60%--i'll take that expectancy !!

best,

surf

 

lol surf!

 

Way to go Gordon !!!

 

awwwwww yeah

take that, macal425!!!!!!! hahaha that's what u get for fading me! last place mfer!!!!!

 

I demand a recount. Anyway, I had a stop loss of 2 losing picks.

 

I propose that you repeat the experience 30 times with Quiet1 to see if it was random guess