That the markets are largely random. " The single hardest thing I have to do to make people understand how I trade is to convince them how wrong I can be about things, how much of a guess it is. They think there's some magic involved and that it's not just trial and error."--Dennis Rich, The Complete Turtle Trader, pg 62. In short, this is a pretty good admission that trends only become trends after the fact. The only thing any trader can really do with any indicator is to follow price and hope that it is directional long enough to profit. What say ye, ET? Best Regards Oddi
I like turkey. I can smell it coming from the kitchen but I've been banished from the kitchen by the women. They said by 2:30 pm everything would be ready. The time is now 2:17 pm and from the sounds of things it's ready. I'm going in now, if I'm wrong, I can always go back.
I think you mean Rich Dennis, not Dennis Rich... must be thinking of that cartoon with Dennis the Menace or Richy Rich
There is an article in an attendum to the 11/2007 issue of "Futures" mag which quotes Richard Dennis: We trade everything that you can imagine. It would be hard to explain but it is not the traditional trend following that I have been identified with. Some of it is systematic, some of it isn't. The new wrinkle in the story is electronic trading, it gives you the chance to recreate a little bit of what it is like to be a short-term trader on the floor. [rwk]
I've never quite understood the "no trend" crowd but then again, I'm just one of the little people that follows trends or what I believe to be the meaning of the word trend. What is your definition of a trend (in twenty words or less) and what trading style do you employ that eschews the belief in trends(a link would be fine)? infolode btw:Happy turkey day!
Absolutely the markets are random. There is a technical element to the market but the majority of the movement is explained by randomness. Struggling traders just can't accept this fact and they don't even realize that this is what is preventing them from enjoying some sort of success. A while back I posted a thread about a strategy to deal with randomness and I was stepped on, laughed at, ridiculed, and thrown out the door. Since then, my account has gone up about 3-fold. How will the market reverse after a wicked sell-off? V-bottom, double bottom (higher low), double bottom (lower low), W-bottom, wedge bottom, falling channel bottom, slop bottom? Anyone got the answer? I don't but I have a strategy that will allow me to profit from all of these bottoms. A wanna be trader will look back at the chart and see a double bottom with a lower low and a positive divergence and say, "Ah Ha! The market is technical. Look, see that?" Bull! The next time the market sells off it will reverse in the shape of a V and the trader will miss the trade or it will reverse in a triple bottom and he'll get stopped out on the 3rd low and lose money. You don't know and I don't know how the market will reverse. You can only profit from it if you open your mind to ALL possibilities. Very few traders can do this so most will fail.