Leave out the leverage (like Harris & Yilmaz), the argument still stands. Returns are reduced and so are drawdowns. If [equity = point value x future price] then the intraday risk is equal to simply holding the underlying, the positive returns however still remain and according to the OP they should not because he claims markets are entirely random and fully efficient alongside the EMH arguments. You realize your argument of catastrophic correlated adverse XX% moves is sufficient to invalidate any type of overnight strategy -- I could even easily extend it to any type of intraday trading. Who says that X years of historic data are enough to rule out a fat tail overnight/intraday event? The next logical step would be to argue investing only in bond/equity/commodity indexes as opposed to try outperforming those indexes by ways of trading because markets are efficient in an EMH sense. I could e.g. argue value investing (just to pick a random strategy) is "flawed" because drawdowns are "too big" and stops don't mitigate catastrophic risk because they don't guarantee frictionless execution -- a X% sell stop would be executed with a 99% loss in a -99% overnight gap. Then I argue Munger, Buffet, Klarman, Berkowitz etc. are statistical flukes and simply the result of survivorship bias and how there are legions of big value investors who blew up in spectacular drawdowns because their strategy has no "real edge" over buy & hold. The last nail in the coffin would be the claim how all scientific research showing that equity value factors historically outperform buy & hold over long cycles are simply chasing patters in random data with the bias of hindsight and are thus the result of data snooping. Voila, there are no market inefficiencies!
actually, it doesn't make any sense. sorry, surf http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2412515#post2412515
Correct, and you don't understand why digital High Definition TV is clearer than Analog either, right? Must be magic. This being the case, it's totally understandable why you don't understand why charts when the volume weight of each bar varies it is more unstable and gives you a less clear view of price movement than charts where the bars are volume weighted exactly the same. Hocus pocus right. The reason reading typical charts are so hard is the fact that the bars in which they are created are completely irregular in nature. It would be the same as trying to give everyone the exact same dosage of a medication inflicted with a particular disease and disregarding their body weight. Treating a baby weighing 15 pounds with the same medication dosage as you would a 500 pound person. (magic right, everyone should be able to use the same dosage) This is what typical people are doing when making their trading or investment decisions on charts where each bar on those charts carry a different and unique weight but their decisions are stable based on what they see on that erratically weighted chart. Every industry in the world understands that problem solving begins with stabilizing the problem environment and eliminating all variables before one can begin to work on finding the problem. This is common sense. Only you, the naive and a large number your arrogant "industry professionals" think that the laws of physics, science and common sense don't apply to you and the charts. Nothing consistent has ever worked for you because you have never applied what you do in a consistent environment. Your picks are no better & no worse that anyone else in your industry because of the inconsistent way you look at the markets. But God forbid you even LOOK at something that COULD be what would add that consistency you have been looking for. You attitude is, "It can't work because "I" don't understand it and "I" know everything." Every physics professor I show this to calls it amazing but you are far smarter than any of them.