TA - Objective or Psychological Skill?

No need for the anger man. TA days are long over, its time to move onto greener pasteurs or retire.

You proving a lucky streak does nothing to prove or disprove TA. This is really the only defense of TA I have seen used over and over again-- personfication of results and attributing them to a false god.

surf

 

I backed traders with my money and we taught them and they made money at Van Buren securites...

We traded over a millions shares a month each and averaged about 20 trades a day for 4 to 5 years.


that is well beyond and possible lucky streak.

My dad made 3 to 10 trades a week for a dozen years until about 2 years ago. You think turning 800 into 5 million could be luck under those circumstances.

You really have no template for evaluating traders do you.

Guys who make money trading are lucky to you... guys who blow up customer funds multiple times are great traders to you.


Let me explain something... if you make a lot of trades say a thousand and you make money doing it.... and you are ahead when you stop... you are a good trader...

if you raise money and blow it up multiple times...

you are a promoter not a good trader.

 

With all due respect and my deepest appreciation for your experience you should understand more than anyone here that any type of past performance cannot be and should not be used to prove or disprove any method, model or any other particular way of trading. If you happened to be lucky to win 99 times out of 100 tosses of a coin it does not make you an expert of predicting the coin tossing game regardless what it might seems to you like. It is an extremely difficult concept to grasp, but out of all the people here you might have a chance to see it. Surely, your success record did not come to you without your subjective intuition, experience, talent and the way you perceived the markets at that time. So, any further trials will lack that input thus nullifying the significance of your prior achievements. In simple terms, your success no matter how significant or stable it appears cannot possibly prove or disprove anything because it is simply very subjective. I have come across many successful traders who were exceptionally consistent. However, each one of them had a period of time when “nothing seemed to work” for them and they lose. Then the fortune returns to them and they continue on the path of one sided random walk believing in their hearts that they have mastered their demons. It is that simple.

 

maestro what you describe is technical analysis...
Fear and Greed that is psychology that is what a good trader trys to set up.

 

Since you have no backtesting results for your method, let's just compare live trading results then.

Here are mine, 100% automated TA, live since March-19, up to June 21:
http://rapacapintro.com/account/accounts?acc=CLAlwaysIn

The number of trades isn't reported, it was just past 170. The system is always in the market, long or short, never flat. Fixed position size : 1 contract. No stops / no targets. Just reverse based on TA (24 patterns).

Your turn.

 

that is childish.

in life you have to have a filter to figure what is real and what is fake.

if you understand the market and people all around you are losing money and you make money 99 out of 100 times.

you are almost 100 percent certain you had an edge during that period of time.

Especially if as you were trading you knew how the market would react.

For instance you knew when you hit out the big bid... and only got a partial fill that the specialist was going to walk the offer down three quarters of a point to the round number so you put your cover up one tick from the round number and got filled on the round number.

There is a major difference between trading and stats... its called real life and what is really happening as you watch the market. Some of us understand that... some don't.

There are times that patterns develop in the market because larger players do the same things over and over...

 

I don't doubt you for one minute, Jem. I know what you are saying is true, so there is no need to prove it to me. But, that was a long long time ago, the market structure itself has changed radically since the good old days. if you don;t believe me, try to replicate your success using the same methods back when stocks traded in fractions.

surf

 

That I agree with, however, there is a subtle difference. TA is an attempt to formalize the sense of that Fear and Greed sense through the illusion of “consistent patterns”. This reduction is simply not possible as the complexity of your market perception is by far greater than the limited set of logical descriptors that TA is operating with. That, in turn, creates the constant necessity for subjective interpretations of TA patterns thus completely nullifying their initial purpose. You are an old and experienced trader; you know better than everyone here that your market perception is by far more powerful and valuable than any squiggly lines drown on the chart. They might help you to think and you use them like I use doodling when I think, but on the end, your experience, your talent and your market sense and intuition makes your trade successful and not the TA at all!

 

I'm not sure if I'd say it's childish but it's definitely a statement based on ignorance. Comparing a performance in any financial market to that of a coin toss is a comparison based on ignorance. There simply is no comparison and it's puzzles me why so many people completely discount the fact that some people are more skilled than others at trading or investing. There is no skill to be developed in tossing a coin because the odds of one or the other, short of it landing on its edge, truly is 50:50. To say that about the markets is simply silly.

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With all due respect and my deepest appreciation for your experience you should understand more than anyone here that any type of past performance cannot be and should not be used to prove or disprove any method, model or any other particular way of trading. If you happened to be lucky to win 99 times out of 100 tosses of a coin it does not make you an expert of predicting the coin tossing game regardless what it might seems to you like. It is an extremely difficult concept to grasp, but out of all the people here you might have a chance to see it. Surely, your success record did not come to you without your subjective intuition, experience, talent and the way you perceived the markets at that time. So, any further trials will lack that input thus nullifying the significance of your prior achievements. In simple terms, your success no matter how significant or stable it appears cannot possibly prove or disprove anything because it is simply very subjective. I have come across many successful traders who were exceptionally consistent. However, each one of them had a period of time when “nothing seemed to work” for them and they lose. Then the fortune returns to them and they continue on the path of one sided random walk believing in their hearts that they have mastered their demons. It is that simple.

 

Ok, here are mine.