I really, really dislike the term "holy grail" and what it implies. I know it has been around for quite a while, but who came up with that term in a trading context?
its so stupid, think about the stupidity of it. Would Paul Tudor Jones say Im searching for the Holy Grail of Trading? Would Soros? Or are what you are really saying: I want to be like Soros and PTJ, how can i do it?
Goldman Sachs, Merrill, and the others, make Billions. Year after Year. Trading is a big contributor. The holy grail obviously exists.
Looking for a missing cup that has historical significance has had value to people during various subsequence periods of history. That significance waxes and wnaes and becomes transferred to other objects and quests. The concept of striving for the better does seem to be a continuing part of our culture and everyone has the ability to participate to some extent. My quest in this arena turned out to be to try to capture the potential available by being as effective and efficient as possible. Definitely dullsville by most standards. It turned out to be an iterative refinement process. I imagine the seeds for this were planted in me during architecture school. The two study themes were do do either a variety of designs, each much better and independant of their predicessors or to latch onto an inital concept and continually refine it. I had a caveat as well, I did not enter the architecture major, initilly so I had no formal training in illustration. My situation caused me to follow iterative refinement and limit my illustrations to pen and ink and washes. Dullsville to a Tee. I did add one highlight color only to one place to focus attention. Like white snowpak on a ski lodge sunlit roof eave. So my view of the quest in trading was to work for about fifty years to improve my effectiveness and efficiency by iteratively refining what I started out to do to make money. This is a dull and tortise like mode of travel. I have only reached 8 doublings of money velocity form my initial money velocity. This says nothing specifically when taken from the viewpoint of the level of my initial performance. But it does point out that questing in making money works quite well. I will call what I did complete a quest that found the thing that lay in the distance and was initially "unseeable". It remains unseeable to most. That is the only way it can be it turns out. The proof of this is presented to you by nononsense's last 15 posts. Collect them and place them in a circle at your feet and use crayolas to connect his dots in the circle around your feet. The quest for effectiveness and efficiency is found by doing work. The work is a process (doing stuff over time) that involves iterative refinement. Tangibly, the work product is found in my mind. Anyone might think or believe that it is possible to simply unload the repository. Maybe not. I like to think about Schwagger's Wizard books when this unloading task comes to mind. Schwagger was brilliant in naming the thing he is depicting. Wizards have something Schwagger gleans. Readers "get" the effort Schwagger makes on their behalf. Performers commonly share being effective and efficient. How is this capability dealt with? I would not suggest looking at how it is NOT dealt with. At one point in my life I became influenced by what my formal training meant. I had left architecture and gotten a degree with two of the three minors (EE with UHF and Communications). It was suggested to me to stay in school and move over to the English Department. In 2005 I checked back in and found that 62% of the students had dual majors and one of them was what I got my Masters in. We measured my life's writing by counting along a shelf to see how wide 30 books were...LOL... What happened to me at this one point was the consideration of how valuable doing Engineering was if no one could be told what was being done. Communications seemed to be a part of moving science and technology along the path. today it is significant. So why isn't communications significant in trading? apparently the test of communications significance is how well the trading industry gets people up to grade for successful trading. This, for me, is called transference. Quests that people go on to find the Holy Grail ( meaning performing very effectively and efficiently at profiting at the potential level of what the markets offer) don't happen. There is little or no transference of trading performance from one trader place to any other trader place. after 50 years of iterative refinement and then having 8 doublings of performance available to me, I find that others are not getting much transferred to them from the places they quest or from me personally. I have been checking out the transference since about 1960. It just doesn't happen for very good reasons. What is to be transferred can only be done in a few ways. There is a lot of What out there. Tons of What. The facts are abundant and, they alone, do not have much value as measured by performance effectiveness and efficiency. Luckily, as I look about to check things out, I am told and polls are done that show 4 out of 5 think my views are NG and BS. So I have an excellent automatic filter for look at a small percentage of people with whom to relate. I try to relate to transference by a means that seems to work. Drills work to allow people to iteratively refine their performance and money making knowledge, skills and experience. It simply turned out to be necessary for me to learn how I built my capability. It was an iterative refinement process that most closely resembled repeating successful things and refining their depth and breadth. This, of course pushes aside things that are not important of beneficial. So it is like a do unto others what you do unto yourself thing. In the 4 out of 5 part of the population there are many many stuck people. Mostly people go to dead ends and stay there. they get to find out that everything else, to them , is "unbelievable" or "fucking unbelievable". They cannot get the concept of doing anything different for any purpose. This is the "no drill" part of the world. So to complete a quest for excellence you find what you want to have (have transferred to you), you do work and work is best done as repeated drills. To reach the place of very high money velocity, you work from no risk to knowing how to handle any risk that appears going from lowest to highest risk as you do drills. As an isolated all time fav of mine, I recommend one drill that is really super. Doing it in sets is terrific and doing it a few times a day is a great idea too. It is not found in the wizard books, of course, because it is not wizardry. What would the universal drill be for people who want to make money in any way that is possible? Just think about it; what would 4 out of people find to be utter BS and not possible. What would be super appealing to 1 out of 5 because they would automatically see that it would improve their effectiveness and efficiency at all times and without exception? If you did the connect the dots with nononsense you already know no one who uses it is going to tell anyone else and that is a fact. Quants certainly wouldn't use it at all. I recommend that you do sets of 100 over some time you choose and also that you do a few everyday just whenever you feel like it. you can'tdo 100 in a short time youwill find out. But you can make up your mind to keep a log of them separately and couint each one to get the set done. Were I you I would always have a set running. When you do these notice what happens. Each one happens in a setting; that setting is different most of the time until it gets to not be so unique and different. Then at some point you will feel the settings are finite and after a while they can be grouped and even later they can be seen as common and actually they interrelate. This is a definition of "your personal consciousness being raised. So go for it. Just do it.
Could you please explain this some more? How do you create a prediction model for prices, are there any books, websites that can get me started, or perhaps you could provide some specific details, for example , "I use excel and in excel I use these functions to predict the price a set number of intervals in the future " Is this what you mean when you say a predictive price model ? "The Holy Grail is not chart based. You have finally to analyze and systemize the correct data" How do you go about doing this, what software can you use that will help in achieving this ? I always thought it was impossible to predict prices, at least on a consisent basis, to the level you are suggesting, so I would be very interested in your ideas on this Thanks
sound like skill/drill/fulfill training http://www.greatspeculations.com/brett/ranger.htm but in slightly diff sequence.
great reference for this thread. the drill I want people to do as my fav is the wash trade. By doing them for two pruposes: daily practise and in sets of 100, you get to connect all parts of the market operations together and you see sequences form. One by product is the wash that makes money despite you attempts to get out flat with no profit. It is strange that for most people who do intentional entries to make money, that most of them do chalk up a lot of losses. If they were to just do sets of wash trades, they would get to be more comfortable with their needs to be entering under unfavorable circumstances. Thanks for the reference. In glider flying, one of the constant aspects is picking up thermals. Almost all pilots have the habit of banking into any lift on any side. The most common way to connect with a thermal is to fly along and be sensitive to lift on one or the other wing. You bank into it immediately (I mean very very rapidly) and then you circle to stay in the lift continually. Learning to center on a thermal is a nice exercise that closely resembles doing washes in trading. A nice strong tight lift would be a 2G force level where you are banked about 60 degrees and rising over 1500 ft per min. The fighter 40 second example is very applicable to trading. All washes involve the four steps being repeated: monitor, Analyze, decide, act. When you are used to chasing thermals to stay loft for a few hours, you get used to going xcountry and taking pauses to renew your enregy periodically. After trading and before sunset it is often possible to knock off a few hundred mile from one tow. I usually cut the rope (so to speak) after about 900 elevation gain (a 100 feet above landing approach altitude) and make a go of the afternoon. Trading is the same. You get in the market and soon the "feel" keeps you on the right side of the trade from then onward. the fighter example ofjust needing 40 seconds to get on the right side of the fight is a good example of getting into the groove. It does come down to the mind and the process of equiping your mind to do the maoney making. Like a fighter pilot flies to do combat a trqder goes in the market to continuallly make money. Sports memory is the final resulting level.