Nope haven't heard of that. Seems like you are much more of a tape reader/scalper...interesting. Don't see alot more of those types of traders around these days. What I've been doing is looking for failed a's with a "run" in one direction. Widsepread momentum moves into A-levels that fail...win rate is pretty high, I just scale out of the position and target at some MA's etc. Entry/exit can be a bit of an art form,but the concept is straight forward. You posted the gummy stuff website, do you use any statistical measures in your trading besides A-levels? I've been working with some stat arb stuff and working myself through some pair trading and quant books. All very interesting stuff...have you done any work with this?
Mav, as far the equity market...do you see the bears as the fools in the room right now? Momentum has died down in the past couple weeks and we've failed to make new highs or lows, looks to me like being too bullish or bearish is a bad idea. We've been contracting in range and vol for the past two weeks and haven't done anything. One thing I do know is that from watching CNBC all day since we have it on at the office. All I hear is a flood of bulls coming out everyday and saying the same thing..."year end rally due to a chase for performance"...seems like their are too many people chasing the same idea!
Well, we have been making higher highs and higher lows for 6 weeks now. We keep pushing the trading ranges higher. We keep rallying off bad news. We have oil near $100. I mean, honestly, you can't be bearish with this backdrop. But more importantly, watch the currency markets! Money continues to flow into the carry trade. You can't fade this stuff. It doesn't matter what people on CNBC say or do. Most hedge funds are short. Most retail is in cash and most mutual funds are seriously under performing. Me? I'm just watching ACD and the price action. ACD is pointing towards risk assets going higher.
Every day in this thread I get better information than I did in grad school. If only I found this thread before I applied... Thanks to all
I think the thing that helps the most in trading is getting rid of the fallacy that someone "knows" something. I mean think about the fact that these big hedge funds gs etc have all this money to throw at the markets, and yet if you look at performance metrics it looks like they are throwing darts with large sums of cash. One of the first thing Mav posted on this thread was that there is no holy grail, there is always this implied idea that the guy next to you is a genius, has the holy grail. This will really mess up your mindset, you will always feel inferior. This is about your journey with trading, it is frustrating a lot of the time. Think I enjoy getting stopped out, I don't. Think Mav liked getting stopped on his gold trade, probably not. As far as gummy stuff there are some good ideas on there I try to incorporate what I can from there into my own ideas. Like I said you need to relieve yourself of the idea that there are magic beans. This is probably the worst thing cause you end up going in 8 different directions. Stick with a couple of good ideas that are working, even acd can be over traded and anaylzed.
Lets say you are a mutual fund manager and at the beginning of every year you have to put money to work. You can only trade equities. Here is a weekly chart of spy for this year. If you sold when the mkt was over 1300 (130) which some of the smarter ones did, you would have saved your clients from a 20% drop. My point is by default if you have a nickel you are a fund manager. Conversely if you trade for your own account the mkt gave you a great entry around 1100 area. How will it end? Nobody really fu&*in knows but that's the beauty of it.
Out of sheer boredom, I'm posting the latest carry rates on currencies. Hopefully it will be a value add for some of you. CURRENCY BID ASK AUD 4.1000 4.6000 GBP 0.3000 0.8000 CAD 0.8000 1.3000 CNY -4.2000 -3.7000 CZK 1.3500 1.8500 DKK 1.1000 1.6000 EUR 0.8500 1.3500 HUF 5.1500 6.1500 HKD 0.1250 1.1250 INR 5.0000 7.0000 JPY 0.0500 0.5500 MXN 4.0000 5.0000 TWD -3.0000 -2.0000 NZD 2.1000 2.9000 NOK 1.7500 2.2500 PLN 4.2000 4.7000 SAR 0.7500 2.7500 SGD 0.0500 2.0000 ZAR 5.0000 6.0000 SEK 1.5000 2.0000 CHF 0.0100 0.5100 THB 0.7500 2.7500 TRY 5.3000 6.3000 USD 0.1500 0.6500 XAU -0.5000 0.5000 XAG -1.0000 1.0000
Good advice. As of late...I think I have found an approach to trading that works for me. Creating a process and executing it. A grey-box sort of approach. For the first time in my career, things are actually getting consistent and this is on most types of days(trending-ranging). The Stat arb stuff is simple and intutitive to me, as is ACD. Truly glad to be making some progress.