Rick said:
Mr. Reiser,
I assure you that
http://www.ITSdoc.org has substantial substance and has
nothing to do with whatsoever with peddling.
<snip>
As admirable as your intentions may be, it does show an inherit lack of
understanding of what it takes to succesfully trade the financial
markets - consequently, your apprach then (in so far as actually
attaining your stated goals) is fundamentally flawed.
All you can ever hope to attain is to attract academics and programers -
not real traders. You may come up with some nice theories (the
physicists will be most helpful in this regard) and some conceptually
sound system architectures (the computer scientists and programmers will
be mostly useful in this regard). You may throw in concepts such as
Behvourial finance and AI etc and come up with elegant theories and
formulae which "explain most of the data" - the one missing ingredient
is that of the imput of a real (i.e. succesful) trader.
How can I be so sure of that?. Well there are two reasons:
1). What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander -
when it comes to trading. Trading is a very personal affair and so in
this case, the whole (i.e. the collective) will be of considerably less
value than the sum of its parts - especially considering the fact that
the parts are not likely to be succesful traders - see below
2). The experience of trading exacts a lot (mostly mentally as well as
financially) from a trader. A sucessful trader would have paid his or
her "dues" - several times over - and is constantly being challenged by
the market - by definition, he is paranoid, knowing that he/she can
never rest on his laurels - the only things that keeps him coming back
for more are
i). The belief (backed by historical fact) that he/she can deal with
pretty much what the market throws at him/her
ii). The almost unbelievable rewards that are attainable once one has
mastered the "art" of trading - note "art" not science - any fool can
put together a bunch of scientists and programmers together and "sort
out" the salient properties of the "science part"
Traders are essentially lone eagles - they fly solo, they do not hunt in
packs - and therefore they have a *fundamentally* different mindset from
those whom you will attract. If all you want to do is to write "clever"
systems then by all means go ahead. If you want to *consistently* make
money from the markets - then you simply will not achieve it going down
this route (do you seriously think you are the first person to have
acted on this idea?). I have stated so many times on this ng: The only
way to become a succesful trader is either to learn from a succesful
trader - by watching him trade and asking questions to learn how he
thinks and more importantly, deals with stress situations (you then
adapt your stress responses accordingly - depending on your mental
makeup) or to start small (so that you can survive the truly stupid
miustakes you will make along the way) and learn from your mistakes -
never trade bigger than your risk rules allow and never get too "cocky"
with the market. If trading was as easy as most people thinking - people
who have a 9-5 job must be truly morons (is that the case?)
But this advice is as sexy as the old but sage advice: "If you want to
move out of the ghetto/escape poverty - get a college degree and don't
have kids while you're in your teens". This si common sense - but how
many people heed it?. They would much rather head for the "short cut"
which almost always leads to the jail house. Trading is exactly the same
- the rules don't change for anybody. there is no quick way (unless you
have a mentor - and as I have explained many times already in this ng,
the best mentor is normally a family member - father/uncle etc, or
failing that, a very close *personal* friend - other than that you're on
your own - regardless of what the glossy brochure says.
I am 100% confident however, that you are convinced that I am mistaken -
after 3-5 years of your life has been wasted with little results to show
for it (other than a few "friends" made over the interval and maybe a
really "clever system" - that does not *consistently* make money yet),
you will be less confident about this idea and you will remember this
conversation. What will I be doing in the mean time?
You probably guessed right - I'll be on the otherside of most of your
trades - selling to you when you need to buy (for a "small fee" of
course), and buying from you when you need to sell (for a "small fee"
ofcourse). It's part of the education that you (anyone for that matter)
needs to learn before they either blowout or become good traders. You
see after all, I'm really an educator at heart ;-)
