OK... with today's little humbling and NYNY's points (which are great!)... I want to take the topic off brokers and take it to trader in itself. We initially trade for money. But there are morals involved from personal characteristics. Now, at times the morals and trading or "you" and "trader" conflict. Like me and NYNY in 9/11, "me" told me not to trade. But the "trader" tells you to trade. There's a double standard there and this is actually a huge risk involved psychologically as a trader. But do I think I did the right thing? I actually do. Personally, there's "me" before the "trader" actually "trader" is a part of "me" but not all. Even though it is a large portion, "me" is subjectively who I am. Objectively, "trader" is what I do. In another words, "ME" is the existantial truths of what I am. "Trader" is the actionary truth of how I trade. In another another word, "Trader" is an objective action which "ME" is doing. So let's say, I let the "Trader" take over, then there would be an over-stress towards "ME". In the long run, I'm sure I would have caused problems in "ME" that would eventually affect "trader" because of "Trader" is an actionary part of "ME".... Well, my thoughts... and just a rant...
A short little rant based on the TA Stocks and Commodities banner... I once thought that Van Tharp and Don Bright was the same person. They were kinda "plumpy" with a mustache. Now, Van Tharp lost some weight and shaved his mustache which I can finally resemble between the two. PS. Mr. Van Tharp looks scary shaved clean and lean... or is it just my imagination.... .... hmmm...
ie ai ai o---- ie ai ai o--- Ie Ai Ai O--- wh----y can't be light the sk---y? Today's rant is craziness of trading. First, I can't believe some guys (6 out of 24 as of this writing) people think they are sane... Well, they are sane in there own terms but socially? Nahhh... all 6 of you are crazy... Well here's a Yahoo! American Heritage definition: crazy SYLLABICATION: cra·zy PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: krz KEY ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: cra·zi·er, cra·zi·est 1. Affected with madness; insane. 2. Informal Departing from proportion or moderation, especially: a. Possessed by enthusiasm or excitement: The crowd at the game went crazy. b. Immoderately fond; infatuated: was crazy about boys. c. Intensely involved or preoccupied: is crazy about cars and racing. d. Foolish or impractical; senseless: a crazy scheme for making quick money. NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. cra·zies One who is or appears insane: âTo them she is not a brusque crazy, but âappropriately passionateââ (Mary McGrory). IDIOM: like crazy Informal To an exceeding degree: They were running around like crazy. OTHER FORMS: crazi·ly âADVERB crazi·ness âNOUN ... This just fits a profile of a trader / trading. 1. Affected with madness/insane? Hey don't you feel that everyday? We try to keep our cool but the cool in itself is a resultant of the madness so we're crazy. 2. Informal Departing from proportion or moderation, especially: a. Possessed by enthusiasm or excitement? How many times have you gotten trigger happy for a sudden increase in volatility? Trend-followers like this too... 2b. Immoderately fond; infatuated? Marrying to a position... Keeping losses... 2c. Intensely involved or preoccupied? Art of Trading and/or Money we make! d. Foolish or impractical; senseless? Why do fundamental analysts and technical analysts disapprove each other? Why do discretionary trader and system trader, disagree with each other? There is no practical or sense in the market but in each person differently.
A little bit about trading today... OK... I didn't chat... yesterday's bad trading day caused me to be very careful. I took a long position on the open and kept it until lunch till it hit my stop. The first 15 min. was OK, I was calm with all the hard move but I kept it cool. I decided to keep my position. Because of yesterday I didn't think about pyramiding my position. When I do I do two things, I raise my stops and be extra careful. So I was really bored... I ended up taking exactly 20 NQ handles with me... well, it's really stupid to be doing this but how much "stupidly" would I have made today... hmmm... ok looking through the charts and looking at how I moved my stops... I guess about 38-40 handles... well, let's put my psychological part inside... 30-35 maybe... who knows... Well, anyways there's a little point I would like to make. I think there is a vital balance between trigger happy and being calm and being conservative. To make a pointless pro and con, being conservative is good because you are risking less and you are less probable of losing money. But as a trader we are risk takers, we have to take risks to make money and we should be willing to take it when we feel that there is an edge to the trade. I actually go through is every week. One half seems better at one time, the other half seems better at other times. The best days of my trading comes from when I have everything balanced. That doesn't mean I'm going to be aggresive tomorrow though. I 'm just going to do what I feel is best at the time. Still, I have been under-performing my "semi-WDGann's clone" system for the past 2 days... (is it because of this journal???) Well, anyways... just my rant...
Well, I was going through surf report and I had a negative impression about responses about his journal so I'd like to rant about that. (I hope to make it short ) Not to be conceited or be disrespectful to surf, I personally believe I am close or maybe better with Gann Analysis than him. (I'm sure I will be getting some negative feedback from this comment... LOL... something like, "Let's see you make a prediction"... LOL...) But that's not the point, it's so damn hard to trade it. Is it the hardest to trade with? No, I don't think so... whether it be a moving average or others, it's easy to back-test an idea and say it works, it's easy to look back and say it works but in real-time??? It's just a trader thing, you know what I mean right? But Gann cannot be back-tested or is not definite compared to other analysis. We can't get a set of data to say it works, we don't even have a static rule to do it. Most of it's base is perceptional rules of how to do it. Gann Analysis is like a full discretionary technical analysis. There's no formula to it, maybe just a line and some other unequational but conceptual perception. There are discretionary traders who use oscillators, but for Gann the oscillator in itself is discretionary... Knowing that for myself, trading that is hard... So do you get my point? Disregarding surf, trading well with anything is more respectable than any accurate analysis. Look at me... I'm a bad trader... but somewhat of an analyst, which sucks to be.... Is surf a guru? Sure, as a trader... Just my rant...
I just finished re-coding my little studies and systems written in EasyLanguage to WealthScript. Also, finished my Gann Tool coding for Wealth-Lab!!! Now I will be deleting the 2000i... no more Global Server and crappy data management... LOL... I am now an official Gann Wealth-Lab guy!!!! Gann angles? Time counts? Ha ha ha... don't you think I would have made a tools for that before hand? Also, a better one than the ones they have in TS... Now, I will start planning for a Automated Gann Square Placer!!! WOOOTTT!!! sorry just wanted to rant to share my happiness to others.
Found this to be interesting: http://skepdic.com/pseudosc.html Mainly: A pseudoscience is set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific when they are not scientific. Scientific theories are characterized by such things as (a) being based upon empirical observation rather than the authority of some sacred text; (b) explaining a range of empirical phenomena; (c) being empirically tested in some meaningful way, usually involving testing specific predictions deduced from the theory; (d) being confirmed rather than falsified by empirical tests or with the discovery of new facts; (e) being impersonal and therefore testable by anyone regardless of personal religious or metaphysical beliefs; (f) being dynamic and fecund, leading investigators to new knowledge and understanding of the interrelatedness of the natural world rather than being static and stagnant leading to no research or development of a better understanding of anything in the natural world; and (g) being approached with skepticism rather than gullibility, especially regarding paranormal forces or supernatural powers, and being fallible and put forth tentatively rather than being put forth dogmatically as infallible. Now, is this guy just a ignorant A-hole? No, this guy has a point. Look at these: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11809&highlight=Gann Also: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5698&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 I must say, including myself to a large extent... we're freagin' crazy... Crazy in a very very very x 100 bad way... Also, Gann was a Mason. Maybe he was crazy like us too (not to say Masonic Order is bad or anything... there's crazy people in every sort of belief or religion) Reminds me of what Van Tharp mentioned about how our reality is just a reflection of who we are... PS. 24.14% of the people think they're not crazy... part-time or paper traders replying???
I'm thinking I should post something technical once in a while rather than going into the psychology of trading. But everyone has their own way of analyzing the market. Even if I just stick to Technical Analysis, there's too much to cover, there's oscillators, momentum indicator, volatility sentiments, simple chart pattern recognition... the list can go on and on. Then there's the usage of each, within Gann or related analysis there's differences. Take moving averages, some use it for trend confirmation, crossover signal, resistance, etc. etc. too much to cover here too. So I guess I'll start with the basics. There's Time of sales. I guess this can be said as the core basis of technical analysis. There's the time, the price and occationally volume of the transaction. Rather than having a list of TOS, we condense the information visually to charts. Most common chart is Bar Charts, but there's Candlesticks, Kagi, Point and Figure, Gann Swing, Chuugen Line, Line on Close, Gann's Moving Trendline, and others under different time and price frames, from 1 Tick to Yearly+ Charts. Most of the traders, just take granted of the charts and just use it because it's there. But if you think about it, each type of charts have their own purpose based on TOS. When making and trading a successful system, strategy, or style. You have to understand the conceptual background. In a way, you have know when the signal will come out before it actually comes out, or be able to identify and anticipate a signal. When it comes out, you're prepared and "Kachinko (LOL) ", you trade. Personally, blindly making a system doesn't work out in the long run. I used put whatever indicator to filter trades from trial and error to make a system, it doesn't work out. That might be one of the pitfalls of technical analysis or system trader losing in general. I kinda went off topic with systems but charts have their own different concepts. It's mentioned in Van Tharp's Financial Freedom but it is important to understand what you are looking at. Look at moving averages, it's a tool for people who can't read the charts. It's a tool for bad chart readers to identify a trend. It's a trend identification tool. What else can they have made it for initially? Take that further into crossover, it's a signal for bad moving average traders to show relative strengths between short and longer term trends. I'm not suggesting everyone to go out and find the dynamics of the market or seek for a reason in the market. But to understand the objectives of what you are using and doing... Just my rant...
Good morning... I'm up early, maybe too early and I'd like to post something... Well, as a Gann trader, there's something that used to be fun for while that became pretty embarrassing. It's Oddiduro aka Oddiot... I don't want to waste my post mentioning him but I guess I'll make it my last thought about MM and Oddiot, in general. If you're not sure what I'm talking about look at Oddiduro journal or the Murrey Math thread. First, my thought on MM is... it works but for people who are willing to make it work. Just like there are no best one trading style for everyone, there's a "good" trading style for each individual like the martial arts saying, "1 person 1 style, 100 people 100 styles" Though, because of psychological tendency of labeling, bias or prejudice. We identify limited data as a whole. Scary and illogical but it happens even if we are trading. This is a bad for a Gann trader like me. This can be said with system trading, a typical fallacy is curve fitting a system. Few problems with that journal and MM thread: 1. Linguistic Expression is an expression of the person how hard they try to keep it fake. We base our trading based on perception. We look at the chart, indicator, or signal to determine whether to execute a trade. We pick the types of charts, indicator, or signal we use to trade. We have a choice. Choice comes from the conclusion we get based on our perception. Same as our words, we choose to use a certain expression based on perception. That is one major reason we are all responsible for our own actions. We chose to do something, like how we choose to write or say something. 2. Denial, ignorance, and hope for a mistake. He made a challenge with surf. He lost to surf but also was wrong with his prediction. It looks like he's trying to overcome that by starting a journal. He knows most of ET guys are ignorant about esoteric trading techniques to start off with... no matter how hard he tries he can't change it but he continues to come back by adding effort. Exactly like adding a position to a losing trade. 3. I'm not sure Bambu and others are real traders too. They should see that Oddiott is just an idiot. Still, they let him crawl around both entertaining and annoying ET community. Don't they see that Oddiott is just an idiot putting not only MM but trading (beyond Gann) down. Look back, Oddiott messed the whole thing up... it used to be anti-Gann dissing Oddiott, now it's Oddiott=MM, Oddiott=Stupid, then MM=Stupid... 4. People in ET are skeptical, the reason why we are is because a lot of us actually trade in here. We are serious about trading and we don't accept bogus claims that's on Murrey Math. Obviously, most MM followers can't replicate the claims which Murrey Marketing Claims. If there's a learning curve involved then it's the same as any other trading technique, I know a guy who trade better than me with Exponential Moving Average and Bollinger Bands... probably trade better and trade more capital than all MM guys put together... There are more but no more Oddiott stuff... It's not funny anymore... Well, I'll post something more productive for me and others( I hope ) some time later today...
WDG, I like your rants, and the fact that you're normally very humble about yourself This is my take on MM, (although I know nothing about it), and all the other vendor systems and concepts out there. There's no doubt that there are people making money off all sorts of ideas, some crazy, some logical. And also no doubt that there's even more people losing a crap load with the same methods. But how is this possible? Simple, the people that are making the money are good traders anyways, and would make money with almost any kind of system or strategy. You WDG may well be in this league. Take Gann away from you and replace it with something totally different and you'd likely make a return. You agree?