Reminds me of the person who fell into a deep hole. After calling for help for several hours to no avail, he went home, got a ladder and put it into the hole. With this, he was able to escape...
If they are registered as CTA it doesn't matter, because the figures have to be correct. Otherwise you're in deep trouble. I supposed they were registered as CTA. In the right upper corner they talk about CTA's.
Except, I listed since 1990. A one year average does not really make a comparison. In 1990, THIS site had over 35%. But they also had a negative year.
Indeed, a one year average says nothing. What i wanted to show is the huge difference even on 1 year between the two lists. I would never rely on any of these two figures.
<b>An interesting blog entry:</b> July 31, 2007 - Does Technical Trading Work with Commodity Futures? Do relatively low transaction costs and ease of short selling enable profitable technical trading in commodity futures markets? In their recent paper entitled "Can Commodity Futures be Profitably Traded with Quantitative Market Timing Strategies?", Ben Marshall, Rochester Cahan and Jared Cahan investigate the effectiveness of 7,846 quantitative trading rules from five rule families (Filter, Moving Average, Support and Resistance, Channel Breakouts, and On-Balance Volume) for 15 kinds of commodity futures contracts. They test these rules for cocoa, coffee, cotton, crude oil, feeder cattle, gold, heating oil, live cattle, oats, platinum, silver, soy beans, soy oil, sugar and wheat futures. Their testing includes two bootstrapping methodologies, adjustment for data snooping bias and evaluations over different time periods. Using daily price and volume data for 1984-2005, they conclude that: Across the entire sample, nine of 15 commodities have positive mean daily returns, and all exhibit positive kurtosis (fat tails). The best trading rule for each commodity yields statistically significant profits. However, adjustment for data snooping bias eliminates reliable profits for 14 of 15 commodities. The best moving average rule generates profits in excess of reasonable transactions costs for oats even after adjusting for data snooping bias. However, this profitability disappears in the 1995â2005 subperiod. Overall, results indicate that technical rules are not profitable as standalone commodity futures trading methods, but they do not rule out the possibility that such rules might compliment some other trading strategy. In summary, market timing based on technical analysis is not reliably profitable for commodity futures.
Doing research doesn't prove that your results are the holy truth. If you have no knowledge you can research as much as you want, you will never be able to find anything. That's probably why those who did the investigation are no traders, but writers. I did the following test: i used 25 different hammers, 127 different nails and 276 different sorts of wood. The purpose was to get the nail in the wood. Well i didn't succeed in any of the possible combinations. So it is clear that it cannot be done. After discussing with my neighbourhood things changed dramatically. He told me to try it his way: put the point on the wood and knock on the head of the nail. I must admit that that was far better than knocking on the point of the nail with the head of the nail on the wood. My limited knowledge caused my conclusion that was completely wrong. I can prove statistically that they are wrong, but due to experiences in the past i'm not interested in proving that i'm right. First i will have to show my personal results, what i will never do. Second the results will be disputed. Third the period will be considered to short. Fourth the market will probably have been favorite for what i did and it will not work in the long run. Fifth i should probably be the richest man in the world. Sixth, what works now will stop working soon, because no system ever kept on performing. Seventh.............. Eight.................. Nineth................ In short, believe what you want. Those who know have no interest in showing anything. It will bring them no financial advantage. The only thing that will happen is that they will be bashed. And as they need counterparties for their trades it is better to leave the others in their "wisdom". Why create competition for yourself?
Q: If you take a person that can successfully make trading decisions based on technical analyses and another that states that technical analyses doesn't work, then in that case what opinion can we be of a person that arrogantly disputes a fact by proving his personal inability? A: An idiot. Technical analyses is not exact science, but a probability study based on personal research and in most cases theoretical, practical and financial hardships.