Theoretical question on Probability

Discussion in 'Risk Management' started by themickey, Jul 11, 2025 at 6:44 AM.

  1. Businessman

    Businessman

    Van Tharp used to trade these types of stocks for his retirement account. He called them 'efficient' stocks. Stocks that are moving up smoothly.

    His approach was to trade them with a 20% trailing stop.

    That way you don't have to worry about any upside target, just go with them until they stop going up in a smooth uptrend.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2025 at 10:17 AM
  2. Title is wrong. The question is still interesting.
     
  3. MarkBrown

    MarkBrown

    typically intelligent people will argue there is no probabilities that each occurrence is independent unto itself.

    i know this you can flip a coin 1000 times and 500 will be heads and 500 will be tails even though there are strings of consecutive heads and tails in a row.
     
    Sekiyo likes this.
  4. Sekiyo

    Sekiyo

    Yes, there are strings of consecutive heads and tails but it's short term variance and can't be predicted :D We can estimate variance and its probability but the next toss is 1/2.
     
    MarkBrown likes this.
  5. themickey

    themickey

    "Higher risk should mean higher return." - only if you swing trade, for Buy&Holders it becomes less return.
     
  6. MarkBrown

    MarkBrown

    what about higher risk and smaller reward ?