OK Prof, whilst I think your posts are mostly useful you surely cannot be dismissing the use of statistical techniques? Sure, naive uses of statistics can "fudge" results. But to say that this stuff is useless, well..., I guess all those semiconductors in your PC that you are using view this must have been designed on false assumptions...
Nice? If you being nice is being closed-minded and condescending . . . you were absolutely wonderful. Little school? So size matters to you. Sounds like a phallic thing to me. I thought institutions of higher learning were suppose to be just that. I teach at a small school and teach farmers to hedge . . . I suppose that is a black ball against me too. Oh, and the Holy Grail of trading is internal, it's mastering & varifying whatever method you focus on completely . . . that would be something else you are closed-minded about.
I didn't say it was useless. Statistics has its usefulness, just not in trading where being as precise as humanly possible should be the goal of every trader.
OK Prof, then I misread between the lines... I respect your point of view. However, saying that statistical techniques are not useful in trading - to me that is as incorrect as the people arguing whether trends exist or not - or more importantly if one can trade successfully because of them. Statistical techniques are useful in trading performance evaluation, risk management, trade entry/exit determination, etc... There are successful traders that use trend following techniques and successful traders using statistical techniques (and possibly others that look at the stars...) In the end it doesn't matter, what matters is the following: Does the approach make you money on a consistent basis. Good trading to all.
I agree. I should have said that statistical based systems need to be monitored more closely because they are subjective in nature.
My 2 cents: Probably, basically you would never get the right answers you want (based on what I guess) by repeating the same (misleading) question above, it is simply because the question (and its assertions) itself is problematic. First at all, you have established a model of a trading method, and you want others to follow your model without knowing the model by itself is questionable. And looks like you don't want anything deviated from the model by constantly tightening, rather than relaxing, the requirements of the model. Second, a good model imo needs to consider both the market conditions and our corresponding actions. That means your model would be far too simple to simulate the reality of trading (whether profitable or or). I think we may not like others' studies/ papers for many personal reasons, but learning something with an open mind about what others have (rightly or wrongly) done in order to improve our knowledge cannot be bad. Third, even if it is only a component model of the whole model with a bigger picture. (That is not what you expect, it seems to me.) You then need to specify the scope and its delimiting clearly for discussion. Forth, the model imo lacks some fundamental premises of trading for profits, and therefore it cannot be evaluated as a whole model. I guess this alone would be the most serious problem you need to think about to start again. Fifth, ... So on and so forth. Perhaps you would need to review/ redesign/ refine the model in order to get better results in the future. There is no free lunch, Yet. I'm only a newbie in trading, but I believe my experience learned and mistakes made so far would be good enough to present my views mentioned above for your consideration, whether to stick with the same model/ question/ assertions or not. Good luck, always!
my goodness. This is like reading a bad Sartre or Beckett play. A few disgruntled nihilists sitting in a room arguing over nothing for hours, days at a time with no resolution to any of their dilemmas. Better yet, none of them can escape their own minds. You guys are amazing. The stop loss for this thread was blown out days ago. Senor Zen
Aaahhhh! C'mon!!!! It's fun watching and exposing all the nihilists making a fool out of themselves...