nice post mike. i had a situation today that i am trying to get my head round and could be related... maybe typing it out will help me.... i had some (non trading related) bad news over the weekend. i thought the news was a mistake, and incorrect, but i knew even so, it could take a while (weeks) to sort out and may have an impact on my sanity in the mean while. before the markets opened i had a chance to confirm that it was an error - and there is probably nothing to worry about after all. part of the stress was gone. the markets open. do i trade? i tend to stay away if im not feeling 100% for what ever reason. i decided i was on top of myself so started trading. after a few hours, i was happy with my results. i had traded well, and had the money to prove it. but, the markets were sloppy and if i was honest, wasnt 100% after all, so i shut shop early my point is that i was REALLY in the zone this morning. i was there just seeing, understanding and reacting to the markets. douglas calls this making uncommitted assessments Of Probability (if that rings any bells). i can often get into that zone, but cant always stay there all day. i think today i managed it so effortlessly was because my mind was still on other things (the problem). the conscious mind was really still focused on the problem, but my subconscious mind knew there was really no problem and was more interested in the markets maybe?? sorry for all the babble - how does this relate? i think the subconscious mind is more powerful than we think, but weve got to let it do its thang. i think we can help program the subconscious with visualization/psyco-cybernetics (in the link in my previous post). thats what i (we?) need to do - programe our selves to stay in the zone all day. it can be done because others have done it. when were there, we instinctively know what to do without a conscious thought - like your feelings to hold over the weekend.
Grob109, Firstly, I have read several of your posts and can follow most of what you say. I sense experience and knwoledge in your posts but I also question the effectiveness of your ability to express yourself. I admit to having a short attention span but I will also tell you I have a PhD EE (I remember you mentioned you were a part of this field at one point in time) so, if anything, I am capable of absorbing abstract material relatively easily. Let me also say that I am looking forward to your reasons for stating what you stated earlier. I'm not offended by it, but, anyone who makes a claim as yours that dismisses other people's perspectives is either narrow minded or is just being condescending (I know you are not either). To further this discussion, I will say that my fears dominate my trading in one way or another. Subconciously and conciously, I am afraid of the market and how I position myself in it. I always question ALL my assumptions and will change my mind in a split second. I have learned through making mistakes to never be arrogant and to always doubt my abilities. I believe this keeps me fresh and alert. "Healthy fear" also presents a major mental roadblock. Akin to being to being that little animal that sits in a rhino's mouth picking off scraps in between the teeth, I am always looking around to make sure I don't get swallowed. I call it being skiddish and it serves me well in most situations. I firmly believe that a person will not respect something they are not afraid of. However, that being said scraps are just that, scraps.
Steve chipping and Mike: Welcome to the B team ! Here is what a participant to a chat room in which Grub109 was demonstrating his total trading mastery had to say about Grub's actual performance there: For more chuckles see these threads: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=742175#post742175 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=755809#post755809 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=742304#post742304 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=742349#post742349
Steve Tvardek You are making a consistent 0.27% per day, on average. If you do the same with those 34bn of Buffett's, your average profit would be almost 100millions per day. Do you think that the 'selected guru traders' employed by Buffett/Soros are outperforming you? Knowing this would or would not make you happier?
Thanks for asking me elsewhere to return to this thread. Usually I search for myself and look for red file folders. Then I follow up. Personally, I feel that a pserson has to deal with the whole market continually. I believe that this orientation is the basic stepping off point. What this does is force a person to have a monitoring approach that keeps him current with what is going on and knowing what to do at all times. Several levels of understanding do emerge using this premise. One of the most important is to go through the process of seeing that a hold and reversal strategy outweighs an entry and exit strategy. For position trading the hold and reversal can become more simply a "long" biased approach to only trade long and forgo the short half of a cycle. This is because choosing universes to position trade stocks is such that long and short candidates are mutually exclusive. I suggest to you to concentrate learning about the hold concept of hold and reversal trading. The first step is to recognize that price moves in a bounded manner. It also can be seen as a periodic series composed of harmonics. This gives you at least three levels of boundedness where you probably will trade the most profitable harmonic. So were I to give you a basic framework to consider for postion trading equities it would be: 1. chose a universe of equities 2. do one type of trade that lasts 6 to 8 days or less and make 50% of the potential profit. 3. divide you funds into streams where you can concentrate on one stream per day. If you see the cycle duration in days have that many days of streams of capital. 4. limit your holdings in shares to 10% of the low average of volume during the low volume part of the cycle. 5. do partial entries and exits by using block sizes that do not exceed the block sies chowing on the tape or T & S. I will post another opst for each of these five parts above.
Chose a universe of stcks. You need a universe for one reason only. All the stocks in the universe behave in the same manner. choosing a universe should be based upon high quality rather than any other criteria. This gives a relaible top performance in the marketplace. the key tool for determining the Quality of a stock is two things: price performance and corporate earnings. there are percentile grouping for thiese two items. RS and EPS. You need a universe that is large enough to handle your capital. Go for 150 to 200 highest quality stocks. AND together EPS and RS to get this. Volatility is helpful for making money. So choose a price range that gives you high and consistent volatility. Chooose 10 to 50 dollars. To make money you need to have timing down to a knat's ass. This is an engineering term. I there were women in your school (mine lacked them at the time) you would use another measure based upon the diameter of a specific type of hair. This is achieved by using the leading indicator of price, namely volume. You buy when the volume is coming out of dry up (DU) and going to a maximum volume. Use a calculus concept to determine this; measure the volume velocity. This completes your universe selection based upon daily data. next I will give you the trading regime.
2. do one type of trade that lasts 6 to 8 days or less and make 50% of the potential profit. By sorting your universe daily in 5 seconds, you find out three things: a. where a stock is in the cycle b. what is next in the cycle , and c. how fast the cycle is progressing. this is similar to getting the newspaper a day ahead of time and it makes making money simple. do the culling of the universe using the IBD invented EPS and RS percentiles or something better. Sort by increasing volume since it is the leading indicator of price. the list that you will have is for the "long" portion of the trading cycle and it is divided into three parts. At the top is the stocks that broke out yesterday at the bottom are stocks getting ready to break out In the middle are stocks that are getting ready to get ready to breakout. In my system of scoring form 0 to 8 (eight 45degree segments of a periodic cycle of price, you see 7 at the top, ) at the bottom and 1 in the middle. the sequence is a count down over time: buy at 7 , hold through 6 and 5, sell when you go from 4 to 3 and wait through 3, 2, ,1, and 0. then buy on the shift from 0 to 7. Convert the binary values from P, V and A/D to decimal to get the scoring. All of the above is googleable. The monitoring of position trading is not necessary if a person has a job. You just use HLCV data to cull and sort. Count on 10% every 6 to 8 days per stream ad nauseum. To make double the money, you can monitor. Here you print the daily charts and add channel annotations. You draw a "long diagonal as well so you can buy at the bottom and sell at the top. The objective of the annotation is to be able to "hold". "holding" is what you do not know how to do with your randomly picked low quality stocks. thre basic causes of failure, doubt and opinions swings you have created for yourself.
3. divide you funds into streams where you can concentrate on one stream per day. If you see the cycle duration in days have that many days of streams of capital. trading a universe is like interlaced scanning on CRT's. You have a number of streams that peel off one aftr another and you make money on the long half cycle. Lets use 6 streams of 1000 shares for 20 dollars stocks. each day you make 10% of 20,000 dollars. you compound the 2000 dollar profit into the stream and buy 1100 shares of another ) to & shifting stock that you have ready from culling and sorting. This stock is chosen from about 10 ripe ones. The BO happens within the first two ohours of the day as the volume passes through the total shares traded the prior day (DU going to first increasing vloume day (7 score). Then you hold until a score of 4 going to three. you had to opick one stock that day and buy yuo have 5 stocks to HOLD. HOLDING is your big job. You simply track the prorate volume to see that it is increasing over the past day. If not you look at the long diagonal and see if the price is tracking on the line you drew days ago. ther is the stock that you have had the longest to consider as well. It is pooping out so sell it an take the 10 to 20 % profit for tha last 6 days.