"Educational efforts"... . http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200904231754dowjonesdjonline001052
That what make me to wonder, not for the meaning of the question itself but for why you asked yourself this question.
Who says markets are random and you have to guess market direction? If markets were efficient and random then what's the point of trading? Trendfollowers exploit a market inefficiency, namely the tendency of past direction determining the bias of future price movement across different asset classes. SSRN (www.ssrn.com) has half a dozen of scientific publications substantiating this claim. Keep posting away your typical BS replies without ever substantiating anything - Surf's Theory #1 "Markets are random" - Surf's Theory #2 "No edge in trend following" - Surf's Theory #3 "Trends only exist in hindsight" Why keep repeating the same old, Surf? Why not post "God doesn't exist". The resulting discussion with you will be just as fruitless as these trend following threads. You refuse to look at verified facts -- or, much more likely, you don't understand them -- while all your answers are not verified facts but merely an opinion.
I posted one article in this thread. It was updated through 2008 with out of sample data. On SSRN, look for the keywords * EMT (efficient market hypothesis) * momentum * managed futures * tactical/commodity asset allocation If you find the SSRN papers outdated, why not take their claims, formalize them and throw them in a backtesting software (I used tradingblox), use professional grade commodity future data (I used csidata) and see for yourself. Good luck.
Well, probably I'm not at your level of aptitude and perspicacity so I'm not sure I could accomplish all that. But that's another question. My broad point was that the data in the great majority of papers referenced on SSRN are several years stale, and the markets change every day.
is this the post you want to response to? i don't understand your analogy or its application to investing. does one need to personally experience practicing surgery to find a good surgeon? of course not. just like professional investors don't need to "personally" witness or practice with an investing method. one relies on verification to determine if an edge exists in a method. im not following your logic. markets are in a constant state of flux, you simply cant apply a fixed methodolgy and claim you have a money machine. makes no sense. anyway, regardless of your method, i didn't think you were a "trend believer". surf
You are condemning what I do without an understanding of it. You call it "voodoo" or "magic" without an assessment of it. That would be like saying that everything you post is lies without first reading it to verify that statement. What I do is no different than most traders, with the exception that I do it in a fixed environment. I simply look at price without the variables. It's like you refusing to watch a football game on a High Definition TV because it's "magic" and can't work. Same market, same data, same price action but better clarity of oscillations. I never claimed a money machine, I never claimed to be perfect, I claim to be able to see price movemnt in a clearer environment. Common sense would dictate that if one could see price in a clearer environment that their decision making process should be clearer, regardless of their method.
well, hey, a method is a method. i guess you have retracted your claims of perfection. that was ( is ) my only issue with your claims. surf