The market is full of deception all along the food chain. That's one of the common sense reasons why objective, fixed TA systems CAN NOT work as folks here claim. Think outside the brain washing and get the joke that the market is playing on you Truth is, I don't post all my trades but the trades posted are my trades and how/why they were traded. I don't recall "confessing" anything. What do you mean? Remind me. Have you read those 2 books yet? Thanks, surf
By "confessions" I mean you saying that as a journalist you intentionally challenge people to get certain reaction. I somewhat agree with you about TA in a sense that stuff which works for me or NoDoji can hardly be automated for a simple reason: it is not as mechanical as many think. Yes, rules assume if X happens we do Y and expect Z. But there is a "read" element to it too (at least for me). It is not so much a purely subjective "gut feel" or like that, but rather processing of many nuances which accompany almost every trade. A lot of things considered when you trade, so many they can hardly be all described (not even speaking of automation) and hence the impression that many TA traders trade by intuition. In reality though, intuition is the same information processed by our brain just not yet available to the conscious mind. P. S. No haven't read the books yet.
I have witnessed and experienced times that intuitive TA seems to be uncannily at times. My issue is not with chart reading intuitive savants who interpret charts via intuition. It is with objective, automatable TA systems. Nodoji claims her winning system can be automated thus it's purely Objective. I know this is comPletely bogus. surf
I will not argue with those who say TA can be automated. Probably can be, I don't know. But I almost sure can say what I do can't be automated for the simple reason stated above: too much data to process. This is the field where human brain is still much superior to even the best computers and I like it, cause it means no HFT or other algo trading can kill that edge. They always act mechanically and you can even gain some new edge by noticing their "habits". Wouldn't call this "savant" trading though (I can compare, my father is a professor in theoretical physics, THAT is savant activity when he works on his equations ). Just a practical skill. Try to watch some instrument for a few months with full attention and I assure you, soon you will notice the recurring behavior patterns of this market. If not it just means you didn't do it with full focus, but they are still there.
Since my system has fixed rules that describe setups, entry triggers, order placement, and trade management, as well as filters to exclude normally qualifying trades due to the context of previous price action, it most certainly can be automated, and the system has been net profitable for over two years now. Does that mean it will always be a winning system? No guarantee, but as long as it remains a profitable system, I'll continue to trade it. To be fair to Cornix, I do take trades outside my plan. Sometimes I'm away from my desk, miss the proper entry and chase a move; sometimes I get foggy and put on a trade when the context filters invalidate it; sometimes I hesitate to trade a valid setup because I form an opinion based on the strength or weakness of the overall market. If I analyzed the net result of all my out-of-plan trades, my guess it would be either flat or negative, not positive. Technical trading depends on the trader acting as the casino not the gambler. Trade every setup, manage according to plan, which means if you can automate, by all means automate. Never forget the rats and the pigeons who outperformed the humans because they learned quickly to do the same thing every time and reap the reward of odds in their favor despite totally random distribution of the reward.
Agree with you NoD, just doubt my, yours or one old man's we both are so grateful to trading can be automated in the sense of creating computer algo which would trade it just as well. Maybe I'm wrong, but I hardly can imagine a software code which would be able to consider these relations between all elements and commit correct decisions. If it was possible, guess someone would sure create it already, likely someone from top institutions who have access to virtually unlimited financial, scientific and computer resources. Other than that, our trading is certainly like 90% automated (10% is the "read" which is a bit subjective at times) but the algo is ourselves, not the machine.
Have a great weekend, everyone! Heading to Connecticut for a weekend of partying with some academics, hedgies and potential investors in Greenwich and Weston. See you Monday surf
We got a nice move up into scary Friday but I forget to explain what I was looking for. I didn't mean we should watch every Friday's close, I meant when there is a likelihood of of dangerous short action because of time and price meeting in an alarming way, then we need to pay particular attention to the last 2 hours on a Friday as that is when a surprise run can set in to weak prices. As I post this the Dow is down 166 points on the day after a narrow range doji yesterday. Today's close could test or break the pattern I referred to earlier in the thread. Guess I got lucky again. Not a good day for being long Goog