Feb

1

I don't think one becomes good at trading until we have been beaten so much that we no longer fear the beast…once you learn how to take any shot the market give you, success comes so much easier.

Jay Pasch replies:

There is wisdom in this post; it also emphasizes the importance of having enough skin in the game to experience its sensitivities especially when it comes to turning points– turning points start to hurt, they frustrate you, they wear you down, they rub you raw to a point where you think you can't take it anymore, to a point where you question your methods, why you trade for a living, to a point of throwing in the towel– it is then that the trader needs his perseverance the most and to stay awake.

Victor Niederhoffer asks:

What are the turning points and how can they be predicted? That's a good way of
trading I think. A turning point and run are pretty much the same with
proper definitions as a start.

Jim Sogi writes: 

There are enough niches and styles in markets that a person can find one in which his own weaknesses create the least problems.

Rocky Humbert writes: 

Craig wrote about Cyclone Yasi a few days ago. This is a monster storm, and may hit Queensland sugar (and other ag) production. It will be a couple of days before the markets "digest" the results.

Spot sugar is already in tight supply. If the Queensland crop is damaged, it could push up out-month sugar prices, and this might even feed into higher corn prices (i.e. corn syrup). Conversely, the ag markets are already extremely "hot," and we've not seen a bearish headline for ages.

Earlier this morning, the chair asked a most relevant question: "what are turning points and how can they be predicted?" The chair has also previously written that "reversals are more lucrative than trends." Over the past 12 months, sugar is up 65%, coffee is up 76%, cotton is up 125%. If reversals are indeed more lucrative than trends, I'd love to figure out when I should reverse these positions, since I keep wasting money on my hedges. Sadly, the only turning points that I ever see are with 20:20 hindsight.

Vince Fulco writes: 

There seems to be a prevailing reasoning in the trading world that "reversals" or "turning points" are something which must be predicted– while trading "trends" is something which is not predicted, but merely, reacted to. The latter, not requiring "prediction."

I think that prevailing reasoning is false. Being a trend follower still requires one to predict in the sense that he is predicting the trend will continue. Both approaches require prediction. (Similarly, a non-directional approach, a market-neutral approach, say, writing butterflies, is, by the same reasoning, requiring prediction in that one is predicting the market will stay sideways, or at least not go into a protracted trend).

So my question to the site is this: Is it possible therefore to trade and not predict?

Gibbons Burke comments: 

Method one: Book your profits in your mind, don't treat it as "house money" and decide right now, for each market, how much of your money you are willing to give back to the markets. Draw your line in the sand and let the market take you out at that point. If it takes you out and then goes back to make new highs, consider maybe getting back in.

Method two, which I prefer: take half of your positions off the table, cash in the chips and reward your self for being right. Let the rest ride with a stop set at the point determined by method one. If you keep being right, and start feeling like you want to reward yourself for being right again, take half off again. Keep raising your stop on the remaining positions to lock in your profits, and let the market take you out when it feels like doing so. And given the magnitude of the trends, the likelihood is that when it decides to take you out, it will keep going in lobogola fashion.

I've had this very argument with a well known trend follower/leader on his Facebook page a couple of times. He keeps insisting that trend followers are superior to the other species of traders because they don't make predictions. But my contention is that trend followers are simply deluding themselves if they think they aren't making predictions.

They are predicting that when they get a trend following signal that the market will continue in their direction by a magnitude that is more than twice the size of the risk they are taking on. They predict that this will happen maybe 20% of the time, and that when they catch those big moves they will make up for all the psyche-destroying losses of which they predict their method will keep small.

It is a different sort of prediction, but it is nonetheless a prediction.


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