Hank, try iwn like I said before. I posted a chart of trading the 34/8 ema of iwn earlier in this thread. Also, try ewo,iyr,ewy,dsv,ewz,eem,adre,ilf,iws, and iwo. On the managed mutual fund side, try odmax (see chart posted in this thread), frmcx (now closed to new investors, but may reopen), mmeax and hrtvx. For the managed funds, you have to watch the minimum hold times. For hrtvx it's 10 days, odmax and frmcx 30, and mmeax it's 60 days. As a first pass, try trading with the 34/8 ema crossover. Historically, all these funds and ETFs give a higher annual return and lower drawdown when traded with their 34/8 ema. You could probably do better by playing around with the ema params a bit for each and/or combining the ema crossover with macd and stochastic. I posted a gif file earlier in this thread of a composite equity curve trading ewo, iyr and iwn in this manner. Very low max drawdown of ~6% with a 24% return. I have written a lot of code for trading odmax and mmeax but you would need to have a database called FastTrack to use it.
John Henry made a fortune trading trends. I'm sure he didn't lead. Market doesn't allow you to lead. there is no you in the market, that is recognizable. the only perfect system I have seen follows the trends. short and long...it is simple....up means buy/down means sell/simple as falling off a log.....buy high sell low trend is your friend............channel works everytime as long as big news doesn't come along and jerk the log out from under your behind. that's what stops are for.
reviving this thread, since recently while perusing the internet, i happened to run across ed seykota's writings on the concept of trend. as you know, mr. seykota is held in high esteem by the popularizers of the trend myth-- SO i was very surprised to read the following gems on his website: "there is no such thing as current trend, when we speak of trends we are necessarily projecting our own definitions" AND "Trend does not exist in the now and the phrase, the trend, has no inherent meaning" i am indeed happy to see that this legend and myself apparently have more in common on our definition of trend than i was led to believe by the popularizers of the myth. http://www.seykota.com/tribe/TSP/Trends/index.htm best, surfer
How about this: Someone says "There is no such thing as trends, but movements. Trading is all about movements, not trends. To do trading well and profitably, we must be good in tracking movements, rather than following trends."
hey odd, how about trends only exist in the past. when directional trading, one only knows that he is with "the trend" if profitable, and if not profitable is clearly against the supposed trend.... surfer
Please refer to the answer here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=883525#post883521
We could argue that a upward trend in prices is due to a macro increase in demand. That is, when you are following a "trend", you are actually predicting that the demand for the security will increase/supply will decrease. Therefore, while "trends" might or might not be real, a macro increase in the demand for a security is very real.
As I've said before, the money is in the gyrations (eg DOW index). It will always be helpful that the rest of the world and his dog prefer to be locked into 'trend'.
Just resurrecting this thread in light of the discussion "predicting randomness". I like the story where Einstein was asked if he thought the universe was infinite. His reply was: I do not know about the universe but I know human stupidity is. Also take a look at this thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49608