Well I concur with Surf, if you can find a system which anticipates demand building (money out of the market on sidelines waiting to enter) this would be a great method.
Surf said he was trading 10 contracts in the e mini for the DJ (the YM). I asked what platdorm he uses for his information. He didn't say except to note he couldn't code anything on it. He uses market info other than "trade info". Most people filter pre trade info with filters. The filters are combos of criteria contexts. To get criteria contexts most people combine snagits of stuff (a vague description) by using operators and logic. Surf may think he is trading and he has a "record" since 2002 sounds like a decade. He said he quit intraday stuff in 2004. His commentary on multi time frames for pre-trade information is kinda superficial so far. He may not use much mathematics after all. He siad Derman (a retired quant who teaches (maybe)) told him all about quant maths. Surf referred to addition, subtraction, division and multiplication terms Derman told him quants used. Derman explained these terms to surf, surf said. For some reason surf focusses on "calls". Many have spoken to surf about books; especially books that speak about bar-by-bar trading orientations. This is an outgrowth of "tape reading" a practice done in earlier days by moguls. Moguls sat around watching young ladies post the "tape" with chalk. The reason people watched the tape was to monitor and analyze the profit segment. Most looked for the beginning and end of the segment. Anyone can look at the record of surf's last effort with 10 contracts and the adding of 10 more for a brief period. He scaled into a 1000 point target and then went flat at about 600 plus points. VN has his minions doing backtesting to see if an idea of VN's could work. VN doesn't know until a minion reports back. surf's world is one where he writes about how Derman told him about Arithmetic. Bravo........
Agreed about his take on Derman. Financial Science does require a lot of data and were I to have lost it my life would have been over... still have data. Loved Derman's book <u>My life as a Quant</u> and could really relate to the insomnia psychosis he describes to the point where he seeks recreational drugs for 3 days sleep at a hotel 2 hours from NYC...
One further question if I may, did you come up with the idea / strategy yourself or was it a result of someone tipping you off to the idea?
Nice work, congrats. One gets a lot of satisfaction creating something original. If you kick ass with superior returns then you will be justified in calling us TA pundits out perhaps, am saying this as TA is hard work.
Ended? I just decided that's enough plus got no more interested in attracting attention to my trades, because changed my business model (decided to stick with just a few friends to manage their money instead of a wider range of investors as I planned before).