Apr

9

The worst mistake in business is to get in over your head. Don't ever let yourself do it. The market will always be around. Do keep a lab notebook and hand records of all your trades. Try to do as much of your research by hand whenever you can, as it lets you see more things.

Always enumerate your entire computer output by trade so you'll see how it's doing over time and bunches. Try not to listen to smart people on a macro basis, as their views can be marginal and some are smarter than others. Only trade active markets.

Also, don't be afraid to give up on markets. Find a niche where you have an edge and do concentrate on it. I started out with about 10,000 under management. If you can make a little above average, you'll have all the business in the world.

Bill Rafter adds: 

The Chair is absolutely correct about keeping notes. And there is nothing as good as a lab notebook. But everything has the disadvantages of its advantages. I have found in both research and trading that the handwritten lab notebook is essential for thinking through ideas and theoretical problems. But it falls short in terms of practical research because your notes will essentially be anecdotal.

We have found that when researching a particular idea we get excited and may sometimes make manual research "runs" several times a minute. That's too fast to keep adequate handwritten notes. Additionally we may set up research to run thousands of variations overnight in an attempt to find the statistical "truth" of something. In such a case you must have a way of saving each result and sorting and comparing the whole lot. Anecdotal notation is not enough.

The same is true with trading. Every time you make a trade have the results saved according to the type of trade it was. The types are specific to you. Someone else might characterize them differently. The more information the better.

For both research and trading it's best if you create software to save your results. Have the results of each research run or trade stored in a text file, and then have the ability to plop the results of all such research and trades in an excel file for comparison. You may not be the smartest "natural" researcher or trader, but your documentation and filing system will enable you to avoid future mistakes.

Most people fail at the business of trading. Most people trade "anecdotally." My guess is that the Venn diagrams of these shows considerable overlap. As the demigod said, it's perspiration, not inspiration.

Hany Saad comments:

What is getting in over your head? Is leverage getting in over one's head? Is over leveraging? What is overleverage? should one be only trading on a 1 to 1 … 1 to 3, or use the maximum leverage possible? Should one diversify? if you are trading the stockmarket, is anything above 15 positions really necessary? Is anything above that even easily trackable by a manager?

It is unfortunate that the first advise seasoned managers offer you is to diversify. I believe this is the mistake managers make the most. They over-diversify and they lose track of the raison d'etre of their positions in the first place. Do not over-diversify.

On a side note, I am guilty of not following Vic's advise about hand studies. I only started after reading this post by simply putting down prices on graph paper, and let me tell you that the feeling you get out of the process is incredible. Things you would very easily miss by using the computer become clear to you. The only problem is that the process can be very time consuming, but not without its benefits. 

Alex Castaldo offers:

What is getting in over your head?

Really you don't know? We have some experts on this right here on the Spec-List. Or is it a rhetorical question?

What is over-leverage?

Ed Seykota has a good explanation on his web site. (I don't like Ed Seykota, BTW, too arrogant.) For a given expectation, as you increase leverage at some point the rate of return decreases. A hump shaped curve.

Should one diversify?

Let's not waste time on this; Markowitz already got the Nobel Prize for answering it.

If you are trading the stock market, is anything above 15 positions really necessary?

Do you think that Jim Simon or David Shaw have portfolios of fewer than 15 stocks?

Is anything above [15 stocks] even easily tractable by the manager?

With a computer you can keep track of 1500 stocks practically as easily as 15.

I believe this is the mistake managers do the most. They over-diversify.

Think of it from the Markowitz point of view. You have a quadratic program in terms of means, variances, and covariances, plus you add a constraint "no more than 15 stocks." Solve the QP. Now remove the constraint of only 15 stocks and solve the QP again. What happens to the rate of return? In all but pathological cases it increases (and it never decreases) by removing that constraint.

Think of it also from the Statarb point of view. You have an algorithm that successfully predicts stock excess returns. As long as the excess returns are greater than the transaction cost, you might as well include as many stocks as possible in the portfolio. By limiting the portfolio to 15 stocks you are leaving money on the table.

From Sushil Kedia:

The picture captioned Guru has some inspiring stories to tell. This particular snapshot shows Abhishek Bacchan - the current contender for the superstar slot in Bollywood. In this recent blockbuster titled Guru he is playing the role of Gurukant Desai - a pseudonym for Dhirubhai H Ambani - the biggest tycoon ever in Indian business.

The sea of umbrellas in the backdrop is a touching sense of cinematography and attempts to capture that historic moment when nearly two decades ago for the first time in India a Public Limited Company held its Annual General Meeting in a sports stadium for the first time. Mr. Ambani is credited to be the father of the raging equity cult in this nation. The lashing rains, it is said, did not dissuade a near histrionic crowd from dispersing. This picture thus has a story of a man, who was barely literate but had all the speculative and risk taking genetics to inspire milling crowds to supply capital.

Mr. Ambani was a rank outsider in the industrial club of post-independence India. The son of a village schoolteacher who resigned from secure employment to create the largest ever-industrial enterprise in India. The Reliance group of companies that he went onto create have had grown within twenty years of coming to life to be the largest market capitalization companies in their respective sectors, largest sales, largest profits, largest number of shareholders, largest everything.

The movie is a reasonably close depiction of many of his facets (and three hours can't be enough to justly portray the racing pace of two decades of growth). An ace natural speculator, his enterprises have continued to expand in ways very typical of a trader who pyramids correctly and manages risk. This movie depicts inspiringly enough for any trader how a rank outsider without any crutches of a business lineage or modern education applies commonsense, correct usage of the envelope and pencil device (hand-studies), intelligence and sheer diligence to beat the system at its own tracks.

Lores suggest that when Dhirubhai was working as a clerk for a commodity trader on the port of Aden at the age of sixteen, suddenly the town started discovering the trading prowess of the lad with acumen. A particular denomination of coins vanished gradually first and completely later out of circulation. The value of the silver content had gone higher than the nominal value of the coins. It is believed his first large wad of capital originated from this arbitrage. [Not shown in the movie though]

A ticklishly touching sequence from the movie shows that when the Futures exchange in Mumbai was shut down by the orders signed by a bureaucrat that described speculation as unproductive gambling, Guru / Dhirubhai hires a truck and dumps long and fat rolls of polyester yarn in the living room of this bureaucrat. The officer scared of a possible tarnishing of his reputation that others may think all this yarn is lying in his house asks him to remove it immediately. Dhirubhai walks off saying the only two ways the officer can dispose off the yarn is by either dumping it all in the sea or re-opening the exchange where it is possible to buy and sell. Perplexed for several days, the officer tracks Dhirubhai down over and orders the re-opening of the exchange turning the David a darling of the Goliaths.

If anyone is interested in figuring out how modern India's business structures operate, what is the "inside picture", what is to be not done and what must be done this is a must watch movie. For those purely interested in trading philosophies the ingenuity of the hero of this saga has continuous positive surprises. For a rise as meteoric as this in such short time, what is remarkable is that for all his aggression he clearly believed and lived inside out that, "the worst mistake in business is to get in over your head." He is more Aggressive and more humble than the competition and in equal measure.

Of the hundreds of popular Ambanisms one would in the present context mention these few:

"No one was ever issued an invitation to profits."

"If I have to salute a peon in someone's office to get past my objectives, it is part of my work to do so."

"Calamity is the origin of other opportunities."

"Think big, think fast, think ahead. Ideas are no one's monopoly."

Vic replies:

One of the greatest mysteries to me is how trading firms like the ones mentioned can garner over sized returns with short term activities, considering the massive bid asked spreads and exposure to the principles of ever changing cycles. Smart people I have known, like my first partner who was a champion bridge player as well as number one in M.A.A. comp., have never understand that whatever looks like it works is doomed to failure. Despite this, to his credit he was a buy and hold man with a reasonably positive view of the resilience of enterprise, and was thus able to participate in the drift of the 10,000 fold return per century.

On the other hand the firms mentioned are riddled by those who hate enterprise and would seem to favor things like long/short, making their inability to overcome the bid asked spread even more incredibly likely to me. But as they say, when I pose similar lacnunae against the sport-term owner, he is the one who owns the big teams and I am still a very small operator. I am a poster boy for how volatility and chronic bullishness can lead to disaster, as well as the butt of the mojo of the expert derivatives man who is so ready and able to take all my meager chips on the all too frequent black swan events.


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