Yorkid

Thank you for those words of oaty wisdom, john :o) I guess "everybody's gotta be somewhere" (Eccles).

Now that MM has had a chance to post, here, as promised is what I wrote before having second thoughts and letting MM have that chance: A bit about why I find Australia a depressing place to live. We were in Brisbane and Ipswich. We found an excellent school for the kids - the Brisbane Independent School - and that was by far the best thing about Oz for me. Where to start with the depressing stuff? Well, the state school system is repressive. The attitude to the environment is wantonly exploitative to the point of stupidity - and this does not seem to have changed since Donald Horne wrote "The Lucky Country": Tim Flannery is a reference here if you want chapter and verse. The press is parochial and partisan to a cringeworthy degree. The television is appalingly slanted towards the desires of advertisers (note I do not say "needs" of advertisers: what they "need" is to be shown the door). The politicians are as corrupt a bunch of gerrymanderers and pocket-liners as you'll find anywhere. Misogyny is rife. Racism is rife. The cultural datum point seems to be derived from a cross between Edwardian jingoism and an attitude of plebeian false-consciousness - "this is where we get a bit of our own back" (I did say I was reading "The Ragged trousered Philanthropists"). These are just a few of my favourite things :o) -------------------- Ok, I'd just like to add this: the word "disappointment" is freighted with the unspoken - the expectation that I would find something better in Oz than I left behind in Scotland. My expectations have to be taken into account. I accept that they were probably unrealistic and that I might be accused (by outsiders) of not trying hard enough to appreciate what was on offer. In my defence, I would just like to say that I have better taste than you might imagine and that Australian culture had - we were there from 1990 to 1992 - (and probably still has) to offer :o) You'll have to believe me that I have no objection to hot weather and that I have seen better parts of the world to live. You don't, however, need to take my word for it that that glorious Australian export - that shining example of Australian culture, one Rupert Murdoch, is responsible for spreading the noxious virus of tabloid journalism that, despite its few saving graces of investigative success, has given rise to the near global acceptance of the dismally irresponsible attitudes that lead to the sort of incident that gave rise to this thread in the first place.

I didn't want to colour MM's response or steal his thunder, johnw, so in response to your request I've jotted down a few things which I have saved and I promise to post them just as they stand when MM has had time to post something. The last thing I want is to start a daft sort of slanging match about Australia. I'm genuinely interested to hear from someone who has said something that strikes a chord with me.

I agree with that sentiment: when I lived there I found it incomprehensible that people would frequently describe it as "paradise". Would you care to elaborate on what it is about Australia that you find depressing?

Ingot54 - I share your anger over this. It just happens that I'm reading Robert Tressells's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists". In the scheme of things that Owen, his main protagonist outlines, royals and disk jockeys would fall into the same category of non-productive individuals who go to make up around three-quarters of society. Nurses, on the other hand, find themselves in the remaining category of those who do productive work. In this instance the iniquity is that people who merely parasitise the productive can find any justification at all, whether it be blame for - however inadvertently - betraying a confidence (the nurse) or acceptance - on whatever grounds - of a morally dubious profession (the disk jockeys), to squeeze the life out of one to whom any of us would surely turn if we ourselves were to be in need. The sheer thoughtlessness of the disk jockeys is staggering almost beyond words. If Prince Charles joked about it then I see that as an attempt to defuse the tension. But someone should have reassured the nurse more directly - and from what little I have heard in news bulletins from the hospital, that is what they said they did: unless their spokesman was blatantly lying, no "reprimand" was involved. Just think about it: three o'clock in the morning and you have the daughter-in-law of the Queen down the corridor and (you think) the Queen herself is on the phone to the ward. Do you automatically think "Hoax" or do you, as a trusting, caring professional respond to the situation on a human level where one mum-in-law's inquiry after their daughter-in-law is as good (or, in everything your training has taught you, ought to be as good) as any other's? Then ask yourself, if this is good enough for the quarter of the population who actually do the productive work, then why the hell is it not good enough for the spongers and idlers - and, alas, I am forced to include myself in their number - who rely on them to feed them and wipe their backsides when they get fucking ill?

"Global markets and economies are mired in the early stages of the biggest disaster ever. Most people think both areas are in the early stages of a prolonged recovery, but in fact they are on the cusp of the second downturn, which will be of epic proportions." (Robert Prechter, Elliott Wave Theorist, Sept. 12th, 2012. In other words, he sees new lows in the DJIA below that of March 2009 before any move above the high of Oct 2007. If Prechter loses this one, what (if anything) will get him to reconsider his methodology? If the frog is boiled slowly enough will enough people believe that he's still alive if he pretends not to notice? Just who exactly are the zombie frogs in this debate?

I think you guys are over analysing this. I learned to drive. Does this mean I have to drive the same car for the rest of my life? Does it mean I have to confine my driving to the same roads I took up until the point at which I passed my driving test? So, what does it really mean to say that I've "learned to drive a car"? The claim "I can drive" doesn't exclude the fact that there might be better drivers that I am, just as the phrase "I've learned to trade" doesn't exclude the possibility that there might be better traders than I am. However, the process of trading carries with it the hidden meaning that the skill of each is pitted against the skills of the rest. This is not so with the skill of driving (though some people seem to drive as though it were). Driving is a cooperative enterprise in the success of its outcome (its "process" as it goes on from day to day) - which is to say that the overwhelming number of participants achieve their goal (arrive safely). Trading is also a cooperative enterprise in the success of its outcome (its "process" as it goes on from day to day) - which is to say that the overwhelming number of participants do not achieve their goal (make a profit). [student] So, Mr Teacher (whoever you are), what is it you really have to offer me (your humble student)? [Teacher] Assuming that you have a certain degree of numeracy and technical competence (otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me), as your mentor I offer you hope and fellowship in the face of adversity and the ultimate impossibility of documentary completeness. [Pauses for thought] [Teacher] Oh, yes, and the fact that your enemy is the rest of the class. So, if you want to "learn how to trade", by which I take it you mean you want to learn how to be a successful trader, then look for transferrable skills in places that fit the profile of the successful trader. But where would the good traders be without all the bad ones? By the law of averages, at least some of those bad traders must end up becoming teachers. Those who can trade, and those who can't trade teach, thus ensuring the viability of the "process".

IS there a "how" to know? If so, why aren't there a lot more scalping daytraders?

Logic - I would be interested in your methods if you would teach me.

Logic - If I understand you correctly, I think you are setting up a straw man there: we may only see through a glass darkly but that does not mean that we have not discerned the main features of what we are looking at. I would suggest that more complete information will certainly be of use but it will not of itself overcome the problem of (the probabilistic nature of) the predictive task. I would also suggest that it is in the nature of fractal patterning that the smallest action of the smallest player has the capacity to resonate in the outcome at the largest level, so I'd conclude that somehow the information one needs for successful prediction is contained in every participant's attitude to every trade and that therefore the progress of the whole can be discerned in the state of the smallest part. We have either got fractals or we have not - more detailed resolution is not the key to either making use of this or indeed to verifying their existence. Perhaps what you are saying is that, given complete data the fractal nature of it would be shown to be an artefact of its previous incompleteness, but I think that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Where I would agree with your plea to get equivolume data would be this: that it might enable us to dispel some of the myths about the level of participation which is supposed to obtain at various stages of a wave's development. It fascinates me that we participate in these things we call markets without really knowing what constitutes a measure of expertise. In "the market's eye" we are all of us equally disadvantaged. I suppose I'm talking about the ideal situation there, but in reality it seems that human nature will see to it that even a rigged market is rigged fractally. Even when mere incompetence reigns supreme over the nature of the information that goes around, the nature of that incompetence is ours and therefore just as likely to be fractally patterned as anything else we are responsible for producing as a body of social actors.

Hi Flojo - Referring specifically to the implications of the fractal nature of markets for traders, Elliott wave theory is the largest relevant body of work. Elliott is credited by Prechter with discovering fractals before Mandelbrot. I think the evidence bears out his claim. I should have given you a link for the Socionomics Institute (although I'm sure you already found it): http://www.socionomics.net Although I trade on a daily basis, and I take the fractal view of markets as something of a given, I was interested in your post because of its application to wider social theory, which is something that would prabably be of little interest for a traders' discussion site. I was particularly struck by the way you focus on the change from one time interval to the next, thus laying emphasis on the dynamic aspect of the market rather than the static pattern-related aspect. The patterns are evidence of the fractal nature (Elliott's work) of the way in which they are themselves generated (your work): it is exploring the possibility of the existence of an algorithm which generates this fractal dynamic which interests me. I don't know if this is ground that Fama has covered, but I suspect that if it is then his mathematics would be too difficult for me to follow. It was with a view to getting some digestible mathematical input that I responded to your post. When you say "sloppy", I think you are being too hard on yourself because there is an inherent barrier in this investigation: it is the irreducibly inductive and reflexive nature of thinking about patterns which we ourselves constitute. My email address is leslie[at]weydale.freeserve.co.uk

Flojo - Here is another implication: social change is fractally ordered. I think you must be disappointed that you have not more responses to your excellent post. If I were you I would submit your work to the Socionomics Institute for publication in their online journal. It is exactly the kind of independent corroboration they are looking for. If you want to get in touch by email I'd be interested. I have ideas that my mathematical ability is not up to pursuing and I'd be grateful for your help. Y.

Or it might have been: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be Freud...", etc. I'm pretty good at getting quotes wrong. I think it's in Ernest Jones's biography of Freud. What does your original observation say about Jung? That you can read pretty much anything you want into him in the way that one can with the markets? Blank slate, Turing machine, all that. Are you familiar with Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concept of the narrative fallacy? Look here Nassim Nicholas Taleb Home and Professional Page and here Opacity Attempting to trade using Elliott Wave analysis myself, I'm very interested in what drives the markets, in the way I think you're referring to by analogy to Jung and the meaning of the integrity of the personality. Is it possible to get beyond what one is tempted to read into markets by virtue of one's participation in them, in the way Jung attempted to get beyond overlaying inappropriate assumptions on his patients? What would an empirical approach to the markets really look like? Has anyone tried it? How would we know?? Thoughts???

"Freud it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be Jung was very heaven..."