zupcon

Most people are not successful at anything. Most people starting a business fail. Most people fail to get a decent education, most people in employment fail to achieve promotions etc, most people can't play football, etc etc There's no shortage of stories about the majority of traders failing even when playing a simulated game with positive expectancy, and they fail for all of the usual reasons, discussed ad nauseam Why would anyone want this to change ?

I was actually thinking of using exactly that as an example !

What a quaint view of technical analysis you have Surely no one dumb enough to actually believe that indicators can be used to predict direction, or to predict anything at all ! I supposed you might find the odd creationist who trades who holds that view, but amongst the rational and sane, that idea is just a non starter. I don't know a single trader who believes that prediction is possible, sure there's a few people trolling forums who claim TA is predictive, but those guys aren't being serious, they are doing it for lulz, or they're doing it to promote various scams etc. it's not meant to be taken seriously FFS Fair enough, anyone stumbling across the typical trading forum for the first time might initially get that impression, but 10 minutes of looking at a chart, and another 10 minutes reading a bit deeper should be enough to put most people straight. I have systems that use a directional bias, and I have systems that use a randomly selected direction. Over a sample size of tens of thousands of trades over the last decade, there's not much difference really. You might argue that's because my ability to predict direction isn't particularly effective, and you'd probably be right, but the again, I don't make money by getting the direction right so I can't really be arsed doing much more research in this area. The people who buy indicators are a special breed. They'll continue to buy indicators regardless, it doesn't matter what the indicator does, or if it "works" the important thing is what it looks like, what colors it uses, how "technical" or "high tech" it appears to be, and the type of advertising used. Just because an indicator allows someone to make money doesn't mean people will buy it. Even MT4 provides indicators for free that anyone who knows the score can use to make money, but despite that, people don't use those indicators. The number of people selling indicators has nothing whatsoever to do with indicators working not working, or there "worth" By the way how many of your "probability based indicator" did you manage to sell at the zoo before they banned you ? Hope you made a killing :rofl:

Why would you need to know when you where about to run out of petrol ? You'll soon work it out when the car starts coughing and spluttering and stops ! Why would you need to know the water temperatures getting a bit high, you'll soon work it out when steam starts coming out of the bonnet ! If your driving a little to fast I'm sure a friendly police officer will pull you up and let you know I assume your car doesn't have a speedometer, or a petrol gauge or a water temperature or oil gauge ?

They'd probably be far better off opening some charts, and retrospectively analysisng the trades you made on this thread (assuming they want to learn to trade and make money) On the other hand, we all need someone to take the other side of our trades so reading babypips might not be a bad idea, or better still, the t2w zoo :rofl:

If you think about this, it's precisely what the typical forex broker does, their slight advantage in the form of the spread, empties 99% of their customers accounts at an alarmingly fast rate. I trade random entries, and I've been doing so for over a decade. My worst draw down over that period was 12%, most years I've made in excess of 100% uncompounded. However, getting that "slight" advantage is far from easy. Just because the advantage required is small, doesn't mean that its easy to achieve, I'm quite disappointed in the moderators decision to delete the comments regarding rob booker I'm not having a go at Rob, but to be brutally frank, it's precisely this kind of meaningless nonsense that's so detrimental to new traders. How can anyone even begin to consider giving a webinar based on these results ? I've been following this thread quite closely, and retrospectively identifying your trades. i had intended sharing a few insights, however, as a consequence of the webinar, and the commercial hijacking of a potentially interesting thread, I'll give that a miss I really do despair for new guys trying to enter this business. I'm out of here

Does Carolyn Boroden even trade these days ?

Perhaps people could take 2 minutes to help out someone else with an interest in randomness, he's had over 40,000 responses so far, but a few more would help. A Random Number

:rofl: Your comment reminded me of an interview that i saw on TV with a woman in the UK talking about the birth of the royal baby. She expressed the opinion that she was "Amazed" that the child was a boy.

What's the max drawdown on those systems ?

I'm sure you could devise a series if tests if you tried. Even informing candidates that they'll be tested at interview will cut out the worst candidates, they just won't show up. Its no different to hiring software developers, give em a technical interview, and you can screen out 95% within the first 10 minutes. No idea what planet your on, but here on earth, no one asking for 40% is going to require a wage ! Similarly, don't even think about incentivizing a wage slave with a percentage of profits. Not even sure about professionals not working for others, I worked for someone else for as long as I needed to, and in turn I had one or two great people working for me before they in turn went off to do their own thing. If you have what you claim you have then there's 3 options, you sort it yourself, or you design the process so its idiot proof, and you monitor processes for compliance, or you find someone just starting out who might have most of the piece of the puzzle but who isn't quite ready to take the leap of faith on their own account. They'll all take the same amount of work, and all have advantages and disadvantages. You won't get very far just complaining about it here, you need to get it sorted.

RANDOM.ORG - Coin Flipper

How exactly will you gain confidence in an individual ? What process will you use ? What skills are required, How will you asses those skills etc etc Over the years, I've pretty much given away the basis of my edge is for anyone who wants it, and I have no shortage of capital, but always happy to take a look at opportunities. You won't get anywhere complaining on a forum, just get it sorted out. You know where I am if you need me.

random trading systems, can I possibly resist ? Yes, I think I will, for the time being at least.

I trade an automated system, and most of the actual work involved in that is monitoring performance against the range of expected returns. Its automated for that reason, because I can't follow instructions, and that's ok if I'm trading relatively small amounts for fun, but its not something I want to be doing when I'm answerable to others and managing risk on their behalf. The reason I can follow my own rules, despite those rules being less effective than my own discretionary trading set ups, is because I know the edge works, because I developed the concept, I developed the technology, I developed the compliance procedures etc. I agree, a monkey should be able to follow the rules, and a monkey probably could, but unfortunately, you would be stuck with a human, doing a clerical job, deserving of no more that minimum wage, in truth the ideal candidate should be paying you to sit in the warm, drink your coffee and use your Internet connection. I'd require 40% of profits on that size of account because if you have an inherent edge, I understand how that edge can be best exploited, and I'll squeeze the last drop of juice out of it. If there's nonsense about discretion etc, then its a non starter, but if there's an edge I can trade it. Your choice really, pay a monkey peanuts, and absorb the losses, or take 60% of the profits, assuming you have an edge, and lets be frank, you don't have to look that far to find one.

I suspect that's how most get there, even the mechanical traders

I've run various businesses, and finding people who will follow instructions is almost impossible. Ten years ago I was running a business that used online affiliates to generate sales. At considerable expense, we developed a marketing plan for the affiliates, with simple step by step instructions. Do X and you'll probably earn Y A chimpanzee could have followed those instructions. We spent a fortune working with motivational consultants, developing our training and marketing materials to convince the affiliates to follow the plan. So what happens, well 95% of those registering as affiliates earned zero. Most would have lost money after paying for expenses. Out of over a quarter of a million registered affiliates, maybe 100 made chump change, 10 made less than the salary they'd get for flipping burgers, 3 made in excess of a million dollars per year, and one regularly made in excess of 500k a month. I talked to hundreds, probably thousands of these people, and in almost every single case, they changed something about the process. I've talked to dozens of other people running similar businesses, and there experiences are the same, people will not follow instructions even when there's overwhelming evidence that its in their interests to do so. I remember as a new graduate discussing the objectives i needed to meet to achieve promotion, did I do it ? No I didn't, I winged whined and moaned about not being promoted (along with the 50 or so other graduates who behaved just like me) watching the one guy who did actually do as he was told promoted into the stratosphere ! Its just human nature, people are self destructive There was a guy on moneytec 10 years ago who tried to set up some sort of industrialized forex process. IIRC this guy owned a factory in the Philippines making hard drives, and he had people staring into high magnification microscopes hand soldering very small wires onto the drives. The people doing this work where working 12 hours a day in the most appalling conditions. His argument was if his employees could be managed and controlled to work under the conditions necessary to manufacture those components, then staring at a screen watching for set ups for 8 hours a day would be child's play. Did it work, no it didn't and it failed because his people wouldn't follow instruction, OR they quit after their first profitable day believing they knew enough about the process to trade in their own account. Personally, I think you could design a process, and you could monitor that process for compliance but the resources required to do so would be better spent elsewhere. I was chatting to someone this weekend who designs process control systems for a large electronics manufacturer, and he was telling me that they incorporate functionality into their production facilities that is totally useless and designed NOT to actually function. For example, if a particular process requires a temperature to be set, and that temperature should be 700 degrees, then the system automatically sets that temperature. However, the machine has a dial on the front that allows the operator to set the temperature, and it has a display that shows the temperature selected by the operator. So If the operator turns the temperature up to 750 degrees that's the temperature that the display will read, and if they turn it down to 650, that's what the display says. HOWEVER in reality, the temperature always stays the same, and the changes are just an illusion. They monitor this stuff all of the time and their operators are constantly overriding the settings that they are instructed to use, despite the fact that whatever settings they choose it has no actual effect ! Basically, the guys on the production line just won't follow instructions, and the only way they can get around this stuff is to create an illusion that the operator is having an input into the process. I worked in Japan very briefly, and whilst they are 10,000 times more likely to follow instructions, even there Ive seen some crazy stuff you just wouldn't believe. If the drawdowns are ok, and you want to cut me in for 40 percent I'll trade it for you, but it'll cost you a lot more than a boat and flat in Spain !

I do think that particular betting sequences can form part of an edge Different kinds of trading approaches do have an influence on the distribution of returns, and there are betting sequences that can be exploited to capitalize on long streaks of consecutive wins for example, or alternatively, to reduce losses in long runs of consecutive losses. I think if your attempting to engineering a particular distribution in gains and losses, it might be worth taking a closer look

Great post, and almost fully in agreement. The point regarding running a system on 10 different computers is an interesting one. When i first started getting involved with developing automated systems i was always surprised at how greatly results varied between different traders testing fully automated systems. Personally I found that people just will not follow even simple instructions. You tell them to run a system on a particular instrument, or timeframe, within certain hours, but they won't. I found by adding simple logging mechanism to the systems people where testing that the majority of testers simply cannot follow the most basic instructions. I also found that when you can get a few people who will take things seriously, there's still quite a lot of variance in results, even small differences in broker data feeds tend to effect technical systems, and once systems start getting out of phase, all hell breaks loose. As an example you might find 8 systems out of 10 trigger a buy trade at 8AM but 2 don't due to small differences in broker feed. Whilst those 8 systems are long, you might have a sell signal at 10:30, which is ignored by the 8 systems and only taken by the 2 systems that where flat. Same goes for exits, 6 out of your 8 longs might close on a stop, the remaining 2 the stop might not get triggered. Its quite interesting watching how fast these things get totally out of phase. In reality, getting a bunch of people to turn something on at precisely the same time every day is practically impossible. That sort of stuff happens with retail bucket shops, and I assume its even worse with real markets and exchange traded products subject to real liquidity constraints where some systems are going to get a fill, some a partial fill, or not filled at all at a particular price. To be honest, I don't really have a firm grasp of the actual numbers because for the last decade or so I've used completely random entries so I no longer routinely track this sort of thing, but i do recall that trying to understand the reasons for the variance in returns from identical systems was quite an important element of getting a much better understanding of how I might actually make some money from this particular game, I would probably argue that as the magnitude of the edge, either positive of negative does not have to be very large to either double or blow an account, and consequentially, very small fluctuations can have fairly significant consequences in the distribution of returns. If those kinds of fluctuations exist even with systematic automated trading where developers are trying to exert tight control over the process, I hate to think what sort of random variations a discretionary trader is going to be subjected too.

Traders don't make consistent profits, You might think they do, and the vendors at trading forums will tell you they do, but take a long hard look at anyone with a public track record, and you'll see the reality. As a general rule, traders don't consistently achieve returns in excess of 100% per annum, but you expect to achieve this in only 2 years. In order to get anywhere near those numbers you'll need to be trading with leverage, maybe not insane leverage, but probably a lot more leverage than a risk adverse person would be comfortable with. What happens if you need 3 years to become profitable ? Or 4 years ? 125 grands a nice chunk of capital, but personally id say that you are grossly under capitalized to even begin considering trading full time. You might make it in 2 years, but very few do. Personally I'd scale back a bit, try working on some longer term methods and hold off taking the leap until I'd hit break even, then start scaling up. The biggest obstacle in your way are your expectations. You think consistent profitability is achievable, even though all documentary evidence shows it isn't possible. You think 10 to 15% a month is achievable at low risk, its not, make no mistake, leverage is dangerous. by asking these kinds of questions on trading forums you pretty much know someones going to tell you its achievable, although to be fair, most of the responses here have been brutally honest, I suspect if you asked the same question at babypips or the zoo, you'd be swamped with vendors telling you how easy it is. No doubt someone will use the argument that just because I can't consistently make 15% a month that doesn't mean no one else can, but the fact remains, there's amost no one out there with publically audited track records who can either. That doesn't mean you can't be profitable, or make a lot of money, or have great years from time to time, but consistency is very difficult to achieve,

Similar question to which came first, the chicken, or the egg ? I'm reasonably confident that you can probably teach someone to trade profitably without input from a psychologist. The problem is I don't think anyone whose capable of delivering that process would choose to do so. That means anyone who really wants to do this is left with the option of figuring things out for themselves, and part of that might involve addressing some psychological issues. I wouldn't recommend a 'trading psychologist' for what should be quite obvious reasons, but neither would I discount getting some help from a professional.

From the data I've seen, demo traders fail just as frequently. Statistically there's no significant differences between the success rates of either demo or live accounts. Personally I could never make money on a demo account until I'd developed an edge You can't really say there is no edge, and then say, oh except for trends ! 10 years ago a bunch of us where killing it with hedged carry trades, there was a edge, it was spotted, and it was milked dry. there's still a massive edge available from carry trades but most don't get it because their expectations are completely unrealistic, and their assumption of what they'd need to do to make those kind of returns are just so diverged from reality they haven't a cat in hells chance of ever joining the dots. They could probably find that edge with half a day on google, but they won't do it. Are highs and lows of the day randomly scattered through the day ? Or do they tend to cluster around market opening times ? I can probably think of 20 things off the top of my head that are a suitable basis for an edge, but really, in over a decade of participating in forums, I met maybe 2 people who had the tenacity to actually put in some work, everyone else wants it handed to them on a plate You know that's true, you've been involved in this nonsense for years All the issues you raise about the brain not being wired to manage risk is perfectly correct, but I'd suggest the fastest way of getting over that stuff is through the adoption of a more mechanical approach, at least until you get to the point where you start to get a feel for how an edge actually manifests itself.

There are profitable automated systems, some are even written in MQL 4 ! But leaving that aside, you now seam to be describing a mechanical system operated by 3 independent people. How does that differ from any other automated system ? And how does 3 people following simple mechanical rules suddenly become an art ? Where's the art in performing a simple clerical job ? Who exactly is calling the trade entry ? Is this some 4th person ? And how can they ever enter a trade if person 2 has to confirm risk reward etc. I don't want to discourage posts in this forum, but they lap up this sort of mumbo jumbo over at the zoo, I'm sure they'd love it.

There's some very stiff competition out there, its not the worst advice I've seen, its not even in the same ballpark as some of the intelligent nonsense that's peddled by industry shills.

If mindset is the issue, how do you account for the complete absence of profitable automated systems in the public domain ? There's no shortage of moronic ideas written in MQL4, and discussed at various forums, tens of thousands of the things, all following mechanical rules, no psychology getting in the way, and yet, unable to overcome a couple of pips of spread each time they trade :haha: By the time anyone's done what needs to be done to get profitable, mindset really isn't an issue. You should post this stuff at the zoo, they'd welcome you back with open arms the way things are going over there :rofl: