Interesting. I am not defending Demark, I don't know him other than from the interview, public information. however, i am on his side regarding the concept of trend following. i do find it odd that this guy is on SAC's payroll supposedly, yet still sells information to the public........ can't seem to get my mind around this. regards, surf
When did they not "guess right"? Can you please list 5 big trendfollowing CTAs with assets > $1bln that "didn't guess right" in the last 10 years and blew up or went through DDs >50%? Thank you. What you call "guessing" is simply entering a directional trade with a defined stop; trend followers get out of losing positions no matter what common sense tells them. A concept that was apparently not familiar to Niederhoffer as he hopelessly averaged into losing positions that "were about to turn around soon" but never did. How come you disappeared from this thread, I was expecting your witty rebuttals but it seems you became tired being confronted with facts http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...&perpage=40&highlight=transtrend&pagenumber=7
Nice quote. I attended a seminar many years ago in NYC where he was describing his indicators. I had already read some of his books and tried to convert his ideas to quantifiable strategies. I plain couldn't replicate it. Too much ambiguity. Too many variables which to me means curve fitting. 13 occurrences of this and X occurrences of that... I trade systematically and I love new ideas but his stuff looked very much like voodoo to me. I'm baffled that people like SAC buy into this, weird.
I'm glad someone else agrees! I had an impossible time backtesting equities using anything of his.... Ok kids count 123 456 789 close your eyes and SELL!
If it didn't use Tom DeMark stuff myself I would understand these comments but since I do use profitably, I disagree. The indicators I have are code-locked including the functions so other than my actual trade experience I have no backtesting data to go by. BTW an intervention was done to me years ago and I am no longer a testaholic.
One of my systems features a DeMark indicator (mean reversion), however it did have an awful year when some of the trend following stuff had a record braking year. I'm only applying the indicator since it performs better than similar mean reversion indicators but I don't follow any of the guidelines he features in any his books. Tested all his other works few years back without much success. As for the "trend following doesn't work" argument, it's just moronic - both work but depend on favorable market conditions, also if you start with the assumption that it doesn't work then you are working against yourself and minimize your chances of developing anything that would work.
if u take into context that it is feb 09,there hasnt been a trend since Nov, so he's right at the moment,and his point about trendlines to me is right on Q,the other points he made about the wealthy guys not being good traders but great money managers was also a good thing to know,the fact that i will never meet this guy,use his service,and only care about that which can increase my acct,make s all this posturing about who's smart and who's smarter just another example of an ET thread gone bad.thanks for posting the original article tho
Tom DeMark's approach is to try to anticipate markets turns. But he does NOT advocate trading against whatever the prevailing trend is at any particular moment. Does he sometimes anticipate a market turn prematurely? Duh, I guess so. That is what money management is for. + + + Someone else said something to the effect he names all his indicators with his initials (TD). What do they suggest he name them instead. For example TD Moving Average - maybe he could call it just Moving Average. Oh that is already taken. How about Displaced or Adaptive or Weighted. Nope all used. Well if he wanted all his indicators to be grouped together and get the credit for researching and testing them, don't you think the easy way would be to selfname them?
How people use DeMark indicators when people don't know the codes and just use "the manual"??? Actually even bloomberg or others don't release the codes, someone still can backtest the indicators with history data right? I guess? I don't have that much money like $400 to waste every month to backtest it, but I am sure someone here has the access and can do so.