1) now I get it - you are a theoretician - not a trader, have never traded - this makes sense now. 2) you are absolutely wrong about this
I'm not going to explain how wrong you are in that. but i think maybe you wouldn't know how to use them. "1) now I get it - you are a theoretician - not a trader, have never traded - this makes sense now." im not a theoretician. im a student. I've traded little here and there, stocks,fx, futuers etc. but I wouldn't call it trading unless I did it full on as a profession. maybe I will soon, i do like to be able to. I do lack a little capital too. didn't get how it "makes sense" for you though. regarding quoted 2, that's my view. but maybe you should've read everything I said. some people have positive expectations. but that has little to do with their methodology. it's actually more based on their judgement. I can present a very good working methodology to a team of traders, but only 2 out 10 will make the real money. the real economical edge with "positive expectations" lies in the cognition process of that individual. not only the mere methedology used. i hope that makes sense. regards.
I read the entire thread and my comments to you and the posters are just reflections from a person's viewpoint who is an amateur and who has limitations in applying capital because of the size of the markets and the individual instruments within given markets. As time passes there does seem to be more opportunity as compared to the past, however. The primary reason seems to be that in my beginnings I did not have either the capital nor was there any amount of information flow (The period from 50 years ago and up to 20 years ago.) Today (the last 10 or 20 years) things seem to be stabilizing comparitively speaking. Those who wish to participate are mostly able to without resrtiction or constraint and this has a very nice smoothing effect. The UBS person's orientation does sound , as you say, oriented to maintaining a competitive corporate position in the infinite scheme of things. The fund quant person shares similar views to UBS's with regard what is going on and will happen vis moving stuff through the system effectively. The part of trading these "institutions" represent are mega and macro in nature by their own strategies to meet financial goals. History notes their success in designing and meeting goals; it is marginal at best. Automation is reaching into these arenas an its share of the operations and results is growing amid the overall growth of these very arenas. The scope and bounds of the thread relates to packages that are applied in various ways and mostly in the low price tag range for businesses and in relatively higher price tag ranges for individual professional and amateurs. I just see prices falling very rapidly over time for given applications. It is not a theme or real concern. We all have what we need and it is something we turnover and upgrade very frequently. Broad news delivery, the broadening of the participant base and electronic internet and trading hasn't changed making money very much in my experience. You see it differently than I do, of course. You see the whole picture changed. There are many new conveniences and they have great utiliy for transferring the information I need and there are information processors that create degrees of freedom from few (5 or so) to many (70ish) and reprocess them into outputs of few degrees; the interim outputs are continually maintained as well. BUT there has really been no change in WHEN these things have to be available to effectively and efficiently make money by proper and timely judgements Completing and processing personal judgements has not changed over the years. And the limitations for how much money can be made with capital continues to be the same. My views are narrow and only apply to stocks, commodities, sector rotation and uncorrelated pairs. Your comment: "if you ignore such important analytics, when computers are much more efficient, I just can't see how you can maintain your edge." It is worth replying to you. I do what you call "edge maintenance" primarily by making strategic operating choices that insulate my approaches from the analytics and the more efficient computers that use them which you mention. As the years have gone by, the method by which I have attained insulation has gradually improved and the effect is that things get better and better. What you describe and what UBS and the quant fund person report out are indirect or induced factors in the improvement. For the poker game, I am playing and the BOT is there and I have insulated myself from him. There is just the BOT, the dealer and me. I take my winnings from the table and the dealer gives me my hand and I play ahead of the BOT at all times so how he plays does not affect me. I use a time offset to insulate myself from the play of the BOT. This can't be, of course, until you look at how the industry is segmented and where the things you speak of are used. I do not interact with those users when they continually apply their operations. I do observe them acting and it is after I have acted. Larry Harris spells this out in Trading and Exchanges under parasitic front runners. Bankers and hedge funds continually arm them selves to fight in the wars they fight. They continually improve their tools. They have battlefields and they fight in many places for many different things. I resolved, long ago, from the start that it was always possible to personally choose sides and I always choose to be with the minority who always win in markets. I just go to the battle field and get there ahead of time and place myself on the winning side (in the literature it is called "parasitic) and as the battle is fought, the rewards are delivered to me. Getting armed, etc is not a thing I have to do or ever expense out. I just have to be there in a timely manner and be a parasite on the winning side. The thread focuses on tools and in particular being efficient in analysis scientifically and mathematically speaking. I focus more on having at my disposal the measure of how people do things with those results that continually emerge from this continuing focus on the use of these tools. When they get it and then use it I observe and then, parasitically, I use their "leading" smart money actions to trade, in a leveraged manner, in front of them. Someone commented on the fact that if you use what other persons use, you are just doing what they do, not better no worse. I have chosen to not use their analytics and computers; but to strategically and parsitically stay in front of them and be pushed. The paradigm you are refining with newer and newer tools is the paradigm of broad and deep Conventional Wisdom that emminates from a tradition that started in the time of swords. When making money can be considered from a different (not just shifted paradigm) it is possible to relate to the CW battles by continually extracting the wiinings by continually being on the right side (the minority) of the battle. There is no futures aspect (predicting) nor probabilites to be concerned with when this stance is taken. A serous limitation exists in that participation is limited by the extent to which particpation can occur; it is not possible to trade more than 10% of the daily cummulative volume activity on a given day. Quality constraints are as severe as well.
I'll reply in 3 parts, directly to each quote section above: You can't explain how wrong I am, because I am simply not wrong. Profitable traders with experience know that trying to "predict" movements in markets is useless. All of that mental masturbation listed in your features list is just another way of kidding yourself that you will know how to trade well when you don't. At best, it may be useful to very long term investing, but not what we are generally talking about on this forum. Not trading. Unless you have traded for thousands of hours, you don't know shit. Pulling the trigger on some part-time trades barely counts. In fact, you may have had enough initial luck to delude yourself into thinking that all you need to do is buy some fancy tools to trade with. What a sad shock you are in for. After you have 3 or more years of DAILY screen time, then you'll have enough experience (if you last that long) to argue the point. Pretty arrogant of you to "explain" obvious platitudes to me like you actually have anything but limited student experience - you are like a person who has taken a one-week self defense class and then debating with a black belt. ------------------------------------------------------------- Besides, you ding dong, you asked the original question and asked for feedback - so does your student mind only appreciate the truth in things that agree with what you want in the first place? Or do you have enough spirit of inquiry to see the truth in what I told you based on experience?
Quite a nutty post. ".. and it does exactly what I had in mind.." "is it worth it, if it does exactly what you need it to do.. " Now tell us Bat, what the heck "you need it to do for you"?
very insighfuly. thanks for the post. I believe the 'minority side' idea.. intresting thoughts.. nononsense, real-time econometric tests, but the convenience is nice too of having tick-by-tick data storage, macro, prop lang, sim+portfolio management, risk management all in one place.
LMAO 2 Good point about the additional data feed costs. Also there may be restrictions about using this software trading in your bathrobe. I believe a 3 piece suit is required. http://www.forbes.com/home/collecting/2004/11/03/cx_ns_1103feat.html
Intelligent agents are able to reason better with lots and lots of variably honed knowledge. Those of which that I've personally referred to... Thanks for your comments.
I think that the obvious answer is NO, it isn't worth it if you have to ask. That said between TT and CQG that is around what I pay for a year. If you are experienced enought to really know how to use them, you would already know the answer to your question. But people have different knowledge, style, experience, etc. That changes the answer. Know one can tell you if it write for you.