I tell you it is impossible to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. If Nickel was a horse with a broken leg, I'd call a vet.
Thought about this again picking up a case of white castles, and wondered: What if that trader always used a 4-tick stoploss, 40-tick target exit upon entry? Wouldn't random entries almost guarantee losses? Wouldn't consistent profitability show that the entry was in fact valid as an edge? What if this trader, given a random position, actually was a horrible trader in that situation because he continually sold relative lows and bought relative highs on exit? Would you still consider him skilled as a trader? What if you knew he had to turn off his screen because he was such a horrible trader, so he wouldn't mess around with his "bogus" trend/TA-generated signal? What else would then explain his profitability, if not his entry?
Perhaps you can explain how it would be possible to profit in (directional) trading without being able to anticipate in what direction and to what minimum extent price will move after you have committed to a prospective position. That is what d is in the challenge question, which I repeat for your convenience: What is a reliable method that can be applied to past price action to determine a usefully large positive or negative number d such that (p1-p0)>=d, where p0 is the current market price and p1 will be the market price in the near future?
I am now pretty sure you have little or no experience building and testing systems. Do you know what a trailing stop is and how to use it? Trading is not about predicting where price will be. You take an entry that gives you a better than 50% chance for profitable movement then manage the trade. You don't enter then wait for your target to get hit. Trading at a timeframe longer than 30 seconds is a different game than scalping. If you expect someone to provide "proof" in your terms (the standpoint of a scalper) then you're never going to get it. Get a Tradestation subscription and do the work yourself.
Perhaps you can explain how it would be possible to determine "a better than 50% chance for profitable movement" without being able to anticipate in what direction and to what minimum extent price will move after you have committed to a prospective position That is what d is in the challenge question, which I repeat for your convenience: What is a reliable method that can be applied to past price action to determine a usefully large positive or negative number d such that (p1-p0)>=d, where p0 is the current market price and p1 will be the market price in the near future?
So I come back to this bullshit thread and see that there is no intelligent response from Nickelscraper. Now that his question has been answered, all that he has left is to repeat his sophomoric question and label the rest of us as unresponsive. It seems to me that this is the kind of person who would insist that his professor spell out in detail all the requirements to get an "A" grade, only to drop the class on the last possible day. The question was answered. All requirements were met. As Nickelscraper pointed out (several times) the lack of response tells the following story: 1. He is unable to respond, because the answer doesn't suit him 2. He is unable to respond, because he is busy looking up "Index Arbitrage" and "Program Trading" on the net. 3. He is unable to respond, because the answer isn't in the form of a system he can go out and use to make money. 4. He is unable to respond because his mom grounded him and took away his computer privileges. By the way folks, this thread now has a special place on my office bulletin board. One of the traders has highlighted some of the more humorous posts. I want to thank many of you for providing some much needed stress relief at the end of the day. Good luck again tomorrow Nickelscraper, we all look forward to the next round of your erudite commentary. Lefty