If anybody's interested, here's one version of an Excel spreadsheet I was using a few years back to keep track of stock trading. As long as you have a limit or target price and specify a risk/reward ratio (RR Ratio), you can use the spreadsheet to give you an indication of when to take a trade and if the trade is going your way, how many shares you can add to your position without violating your RR ratio. I don't use it anymore because now I only trend trade. As Van Tharp says, with trend trading your limit price is the moon. In other words, for trends, you can't set a limit price because you can't predict when the trend will end.
There is nothing circular in my logic. My first post to this stupid thread stated that I believed trends existed. I merely do not need to predefine them. It was never my intent to "prove" their existence. I noted this previously as well. My comments and observations were outside of your inane challenge. You may wish to refer to my first 2 posts closer to the beginning of this thread to confirm this before accusing me of circular logic. It is your own tail that you are chasing here. Pompous ass. Have a good life.
NickleScalper, how do you define "reliability?" You want numbers? This year so far I am down 5% (trendless markets.) Last year (2004) I was up 24%, most of it made in the last four months. In 2003 I was up 47%. Good trending markets. In 2002 up 8%, mostly from cash and bonds. In 2001 up 26%, most of it from early October in the 9/11 rebound. BTW on 9/11, I was short the market. Nasdaq and S&P furures were way up premarket, then the action started. I live in northern Virginia ~5 miles from the Pentagon and heard the plane hit. Thought it was a sonic boom. When the markets reopened a week later, I was up 15%. Gave it all back in the rally and switched to long side. When I said you can't predict when a trend will end, here's what I mean. Say you're in a trend in a long position. If you're using moving average crossovers to give you your exit, you have no way of predicting when the crossover will occur until it happens, but once it does, you close the position. So, you keep making money as the security rises in price, but once it starts declining enough for the short MA to cross the long MA to the downside, there's your exit.
nice trading, postal. however, your success does not indicate that the trend following approach works, simply that you are a skilled trader. hank
Thanks, Hank, but your praise is undeserved. Take a look at the gif files I posted above. These are purely mechanical trades...no skill involved.
It's great that you made a profit. Yet that's only a small sample. By "reliable" I mean a performance that can't be accounted for by chance. Again, flipping a coin would produce a lot of winners.
This just keeps getting better. Postal is a self-proclaimed trend trader. He presents his performance and you comment favorably on his trading. Then, speaking from all possible sides of your mouth, you observe that his performance does not support the notion that trend trading works, but rather that Postal is a skilled trader. There is just no winning, is there? True, Postal's example is anecdotal. However, you seem perfectly content in using anecdotal evidence to support your own claim as per your very first post to this thread of yours. How do you spell hypocrisy? What's the matter with you? (As you may have guessed, I'm having a bad day today. ET is decidedly unsuccessful today as a benign distraction. Thanks for that, hank.)