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UrmaBlume

Market Wizard
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Everything posted by UrmaBlume

  1. UrmaBlume
    Shell, Thank you for the very kind words. I am delighted that so many dozens have found value in my posts. Sorry for my stalkers but that's the internet. One started out kind of neutral, then becam a hater, then apoligized and thanked me for my contribution and now is back to stalking. Though he has said he is done with it - I doubt it, kind of like a woman scorned. Anyway, keep up with your work and your exploration. Keep it original, subject it to rigorous testing and don't take anybody's word for anything. If you are interested in the practical application of intelligent/predictive agents, I will have a new thread up as soon as I get the rest of the text and charts together. Good Luck and if I can be of help PM me again or Skype. cheers UB
  2. UrmaBlume
    Gosh. Thanks. I have so been seeking your inputs. As to my birthday - It was on 3/17 and was my 66th. As to your post and your questions - Bite Me. Maxima looks more like Minima to me. Cheers UrmaBlume PS - I love London -the last time I did business in your city I stayed at Browns, I traded at the Jefferies Desk in Finsbury Circus, I drank at the Chelsea Arts Club and I gambled at the Palms. While some of them may not be today - they were quite suitable then.
  3. UrmaBlume
    Some decades ago I went completely Busto trading bonds from the Market Profile. To recover I dusted off my license as a "Master of Steam or Motor Vessels" and went back to sea running small frieghters around the world. While most of this work was plying the trading routes along the West Coast of Equatorial Africa, I also made a number of passages through the Panama Canal. Passing through the 100+ miles of the canal was always and very interesting trip. I have posted a home page below that has shots of the three major locks in the canal and updates them a couple of times a minute. There are also some links to news, boat stuff, market stuff and poker. A screenshot of the page is below. This is a copy of my, now expired, license as master. The issue number at the top says that I held this license for 25 years. For BrownsFan these small freighters are just short of the length of a football field. Here is a shot of what the page will look like and below is the html file that will produce the page. So everybody can see the code and modify it as they wish here is the code to produce the home page shown. Just save it with the .html and you are good to go: <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="20;"> <TITLE>Pan1</TITLE> </HEAD> <TABLE BORDER = 2> <TR> <TD><IMG SRC="http://test.pancanal.com/webcam/miraflores.jpg" WIDTH=560 HEIGHT=430></TD> <TD> <UL> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.bing.com/">Bing</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.google.com/advanced_search">Google</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://news.bbc.co.uk/">BBC</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.foxnews.com/">Fox</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.cnn.com/">CNN</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.debka.com/">Debka File</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/category.asp?C=5547&nav=menu102_3">Vegas Skies</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.accuweather.com/us/nv/las-vegas/89101/forecast-15day.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=1&metric=0">Accu Weather</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.drudgereport.com/">DrudgeReport</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/normclarke">Vegas Conf</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.tmz.com/">TMZ</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.digg.com">Digg</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page"/>Wikipedia</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://maps.google.com/">Maps</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.foxbusiness.com/">Fox Biz</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.wilmott.com/home.cfm?NoCookies=Yes&forumid=1">Wilmott</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/">TradersLab</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://biz.yahoo.com/c/ec/201012.html">Numbers</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "https://www.acrobat.com/?app=brio&g=1&ret=%2Ftradepoint&mtg=tradepoint#/connectnow/GoToMeetingGuest">AcrobatShare </A></FONT> </UL> </TD> <TD ><IMG SRC="http://test.pancanal.com/webcam/gatun.jpg" WIDTH=560 HEIGHT=430></TD> </TABLE> <TABLE BORDER = 2> <TR> <TD WIDTH=20%> <UL> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://ssca.org/cgi-bin/pagegen.pl?pg=home&title=Home">SevenSeas</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.hartley-boats.com/sailboats.htm">HartleySailboatPlans</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.lystsejleren.dk/bygogsejl/byggeproces1_english.html">Danish Hartley43</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_casualties.html">Maritime</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://1000days.net/home/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1">1000DaysAtSea</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.setsail.com/s_logs/s_logs.html">CruiseLogs</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://cruisenews.net/db/voyagelogs.php">More Cruising Logs</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.cruiser.co.za/links1.asp">Cruising Logs</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.boat-links.com/linklists/boatlink-14.html">More Cruising Logs</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://marinetraffic.com/ais/"> World Marine Traffic</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.donberry.com/harbor2/harbor2.html">Magic Harbor</A></FONT> </UL> </TD> <TD WIDTH=60%><IMG SRC="http://test.pancanal.com/webcam/cerro-luisa.jpg" WIDTH=740 HEIGHT=380></TD> <TD WIDTH=20%> <UL> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.gametheory.net/">GTheory</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.calculator.com/calcs/calc_sci.html">Calculator</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://fclass.vaniercollege.qc.ca/web/mathematics/real/Calculators/PermsCombs_Calc_1.htm">CombFact</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.kdnuggets.com/">KDD</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.TradePointTechnologies.com">TPT</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF ="http://www.cardplayer.com/"/>Card Player</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.taopoker.blogspot.com/">TaoPoker</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://lvcabbiechronicles.blogspot.com/">LVCabbie</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF ="http://www.pokernews.com"/>Poker News</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF ="http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/"/>2 + 2 Forum</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE = "4"><A HREF = "http://www.calottery.com/WinningNumbers/">Lottery</A></FONT> <LI><FONT COLOR = "3344CC" SIZE ="4"><AHREF="http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/LOCKPICKING/">LockPicking</A></FONT> </FONT> </UL> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </HTML>
  4. UrmaBlume
    Very good waveslider. I completely agree with all of it. Maybe you are right, lol, maybe I have been spending too much time trying to track commercial speculative trading when fading the public might just be the answer. Arbs world-wide will be PMing you for formulae. You are again correct when you speak of the value of creativity when it comes to making money in the markets. Nobody I know, quants or otherwise, laughs at anybody who consistently profits in these markets. They do chuckle sometimes at some obvious loser who is trumpeting candlesticks in a neural network world. I certainly, and maybe more than most, salute those who are able to use less than optimal methods and concepts to overcome retail brokerage fees and still consistently take money from today's markets. All that said, the methods and concepts espoused in charts in real time, VSA, profiles, etc., are not state of the art and they are less than optimal for trading in any time frame and those that dispute that fact simply have never seen the inside workings of a real state-of-the-art quant-shop. Of course smart, hard-working, beginners should not be intimidated by anything written or espoused by anyone, especially me. I applaud up and comers possesed with energy and a spark of creativity and actively seek them out for employment. I do, however, feel the coming pain for those who think reading 2 books and a week on this forum is all it takes to conquer the ES. While odds of nineteen to 1 against are tough to overcome by anyone in any endeavor, I agree that creativity may be the single most important factor that separates the 5% or less that will taste success from the rest of the pack. Well Said WaveSlider. cheers UB
  5. UrmaBlume
    NP BlowFish, I always appreciate what you have to say and how well you say it. I too have received many dozens of PMs on these indicators and charts and the only negative PMs I have received have come after I either refused to sell them or refused to give someone the code to them. All of my charts and indicators are my and my developers' own original work and it is interesting to me that well over 95% of the posts here are about someone's opinion of someone else's work or someone's application of someone else's work. I find the biggest complainers are the ones least likely to originate anything. It constantly amazes me how much some get from my posts and graphs and at the same time how little some others can see in those very same charts. I also find it interesting how quickly those that have no technical point can get so personal and so petty. Oh well that's what makes it a market. We are delighted with our work and with the people we have taken on from this forum and find that our filters work just fine. Information = Equity Cheers UB
  6. UrmaBlume
    Startling people and telling them they are mentally infirmed or criticism just does not work. (I know as sometimes I am guilty of it) It completely works for me, I use it as a filter. The real ones and the smart ones know the difference between value and buschwa. (Dale Carnegie "how to win friends and influence people" Chapter one - Principle one - Dont criticise, condemn or complain.) So on that same point I should just shut up now People I know and whose friendship I value think that Dale Carnegie is for those to whom the lowest common denominator is an UpTick. The most, the best, the smartest and the highest value is never available to the 90%. That's part of what makes it the most, the best, the smartest and the highest value. UrmaBlume
  7. UrmaBlume
    Lesser known but with a bit more content is Nuclear Phynance But don't expect anything but utter contempt if you don't speak their language and don't ever expect any specific useable technical information.
  8. UrmaBlume
    Very good stuff James. Not too long ago I was talking to the founder of a well known, multi-billion dollar fund that is moving to full automation as fast as he can. The disucssion was about the valuation of human vs bot traders. We both agreed that if a human trader who earns X is worth Y that a bot who earns X is worth 5-10 times Y just because that while they are developed by humans with emotions, hopefully the emotions don't make it into the code. cheers UB
  9. UrmaBlume
    As an example of the application of intelligent agents to processed market data the shot below is of the last 30 minutes of trade in today's ES. Times are PST. The bars are 2k volume bars. Each bar represents about one thousandth of average session volume. This makes them about 24 second bars. This is an application that we use to teach "scalping with an edge." The color of the bar represents the dominant bias in that particular time/volume frame. In the chart below you will see gray bars (no dominant bias), red bars (sell bias) and blue bars (buy bias). The blue and red + is a recommended entry price. The small red dot is the recommended stop and the blue a good point to scalp. These are what we call TradePoints. The text defines those points for the current bar. Both the text and the TradePoint dots are automatically posted at the first tick of the bar and updated every tick. The second chart down shows a no trade recommendation. The middle sub-graph shows a calculation of net new trade by commercials over a multi-session time frame. The bottom sub-graph shows a collection of weighted biases from 7 different time frames. The yellow is cautionary, the red - sell bias and the blue - buy bias.
  10. UrmaBlume
    BlowFish, Thank you for your well intended, content rich and very well written words. Also thank you for your even temper and your perpetual and continuing contribution to this forum. I understand your words and I appreciate the intent behind them, but you miss the purpose of my posts. When you say "Here's my point. Only the gullible will be seduced." I am not trying to seduce anyone or be anybody's politically correct pal. On the contrary, I want to startle and to completely differentiate myself from what I and some other professionals view as antiquated and and less than optimal concepts and methods. As to "Those who are not gullible but in search of knowledge will likely be confused and sidetracked." My belief is that those in search of knowledge are already sidetracked and confused by most of the material in such threads as charts in real time, VSA, Profiles & Wyckhoff. There is a huge revolution in trading methods, the processing of market data, the application of intelligent agents and financial data visualization going on right now. It just hasn't filtered down to the level of the disucssion on this board. Some of the more successful traders and developers I know believe that in a decade or so only the intellectually infirm will be looking at bars, candles and profiles. In different state of the art trading operations around the world those with the access are beginning to see applications that collect, process and present data from several different related data streams and time frames that is shown in guages, pulse bars, meters etc - some resemble the Market Heads Up Display (HUD) that I have shown here. "Those with the attributes you seek for partnership will probably not want to engage." With all due respect BlowFish, that has not been the case. We have received many dozens of requests to partner, share, join, etc., from every continent on the planet except Africa and Antartica and from those we have, so far, selected less than a dozen and they now trade with/for us. I put the number of applicants that we have accepted so far at less than 5% of total applications and that seems about right. Cheers UrmaBlume
  11. UrmaBlume
    Funny Browns how my biggest detractors are, like you, guys that have tried to buy our stuff and been refused. As to "until UB can offer something that us little retail guys can use" I know of several of the more gifted here have been able to completely reproduce some of our inidicators and those that have report positive results. As I said before I post here to challenge those open to NEW ideas and to spot talent. I have had many long sessions with some of those seeking help and have even taken some of them on as traders. As to being a vendor, while we have formed some hybrid hedge fund/prop shop LLCs and some joint venture trading situations we have never sold or leased any software to anybody. As to posting blotters - if we ever do post anything like that it won't be an easily manipulated sheet from what might well be a simulator, it will be a statement from a broker or clearing agent. Browns if you don't like me or my materail just pass it. I have not and will not ever pick on any of your thousands posts without some specific factual/objective/technical point in mind - no matter how target rich the material. I don't stalk the other posters, I don't ever get personal with anyone about anything and the tone of every post I have made is more objective than subjective. After more than 30 years in the markets and after our phone conversation I have my opinion of your level of market understanding and trading abilities as well as the veracity of the results you post but it I will never make it public. I say again with absolutely no malice that this board is made up of mostly retail traders who lose and will always be losers in the market. Some, however, will learn, advance and make a lot of money but they are the few and at least some of them now work in one of our companies. I also state as fact that the operators who make the most in these markets don't use anything that even remotely resembles the charts in real-time, VSA, Profiles, candles & Wyckhoff that are the main topics here. Some here may take this statement as an insult, some may take it as a challenge, some may take it as an eye opener and some might even take it as an opportunity. The choice is yours and theirs. But it is an objective satement just as is the fact that most here don't make money and never will. My posts are not addressed to those that make up over 90% of this board and make over 90% of the posts, they are addressed to the very few here who have both the will and the intellectual capital to make the breakout. cheers UB
  12. UrmaBlume
    Very well said James. While this is certainly not a quant forum and is most definitely made up of mostly retail and wannabe traders, it is, thanks to James, the friendliest and most civil. I too applaud the traders that can use such dated methods as candles, VSA, profiles & Wyckhoff to make consistent profits. However, the fact remains that the guys that consistantly make the most from theese markets, especially in the shorter time scales, don't use any of those approaches and, in all probability, the users here that do, do so because they have no access to and are unable to engineer for themselves the more optimal trade decision support technologies and methods. Almost 30 years ago I spent some weeks at Peter Steidlmayer's mini-ranch at Butte Meadows learning profile trading and profile theory. There at the same time was a friend that I still talk to today. This friend has successfully traded and operated as a trade consultant using nothing but his knowledge of makets as explained by Peter and the profile ever since. This old friend has had limited access to our work and in just the last couple of months has started to ask me about price mean reversion to regression/least squared fit lines in periods of low volatility, time of day normalized volumes and buy/sell net trade calculations. He has come to realize that his results are dependent on the quality of the information that supports his trade decisions (Information = Equity) and that there is quality information that is not available from the profile alone. That's progress and my bet is that his good results will get better and continue to do so as long as he continues to seek new and better information and methods. While none of the software we use for trading has ever been seen by the public, some of the software we use for training the traders that operate in house and in the prop shop/hedge funds and joint trading ventures we manage has been published here and elsewhere. Some of the brightest here have used those posts to create their own versions of these tools and report positive results from their work. There is a lot of very tough competition for every trading dollar and the sad fact is that the huge amount of dollars involved attracts many who will never muster up the extreme effort required to get beyond the easy and readily available explanations, technologies and methods. Even sadder is the fact that 90+% here lose and will always lose and the few that make it will make it because they did the work to get beyond what is readily available to everybody. We get hundreds of requests to buy our software and they are all refused. Our posts are made to try and motivate the really smart ones to look beyond and for us to spot talent. We recently formed and registered a hybrid hedge fund/prop shop LLC and every investor and trader involved has a multi-year history of trading success, is a member here and none of them have ever posted anything. If a trader's method is working, great, but he should always consider that the most important quality of any approach is that it be adaptive to change. cheers UB
  13. UrmaBlume
    Hi Cory - Yes I would. cheers UB
  14. UrmaBlume
    Chris, You are correct some quants lost a lot of money but not the ones at Goldman or Renaissance. More than 60% of all equity trading in the US is done by quant derived methodologies such as the stat arb of mean reversion pair trading which is the original topic of this thread. It is the best of those that make the most of the money from these markets, they are the "Smart Guys" in the room. Some of them are members here and of those that are members here that I have talked to, none of them ever post and none of them use market delta or consider market delta or VSA, Wyckoff...... Some of those successful, highly educated quants that are members here and never post have joined me in creating and registering UrmaBlume T1, LLC which is a private hybrid cross of a prop shop and a hedge fund. All due respect Chris as I know you are a great proponent of market delta and if it makes you money - right on. We, however, operate on the principle that recent advances in intelligent data mining, data processing, data visualization and higher frequency automated systems have moved beyond such methods of trade decision support as candles, profiles, market delta, etc. cheers UB
  15. UrmaBlume
    I am not implying anything, I am stating that most traders here do not make money and that they trade and espouse methodologies that the people who do make most of the money from these markets laugh at.
  16. UrmaBlume
    You are right. The real problem with bars, profiles, candles, VSA, market delta & Wyckoff is the lack of intelligent processing before the data is visualized. Condescending or not, most members here are strictly retail, long term losers as traders and less than 5% of the members are even remotely familiar with state of the art trade decision support technologies and methods as practiced by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Renaissance Capital. Mention topics like candles, VSA, market profiles, market delta and Wyckoff to any group of up to standard quants you get laughed out of the room and the profile, candles, VSA, market delta and Wyckoff fanatics don't even know the difference. My posts are not directed at the lowest common denominator here and that's my
  17. UrmaBlume
    No I missed Mr Miller's post and every other post made by him and others of his ilk. Believe it of not but most here are still involved with topics like profiles, candles, VSA & Wyckoff with little or no idea of the new era of smart data consolidation and visualization that is fast approaching. As to the desktops - below is a shot of the desks we use for our in-house traders. This particular shot is of my own desk. We operate a mini-pit with 4 more setups just like it. As to the number of monitors we find 8 is as much as most people can handle. While to us Information = Equity is a mantra, we are working on the consolidation of different graphs into the HUD. cheers UB
  18. UrmaBlume
    The specific challenge is also the opportunity in that the leverage is bigger by several orders of magnitude. What this forum lacks in depth of content is more than made up by how friendly and open MOST members really are. The only credible higher frequency quants that I have talked to from this board are members who never post. Just a bit of research of the same kind that found the equity pairs that served you so well will serve you well here too. Try it, you'll like it, and, again, welcome aboard. cheers UB
  19. UrmaBlume
    Welcome Donald. There is indeed considerable statistical arb pair trading in the futures markets. Our bread and butter is tracking such trade. Nice to see some real quant talk for a change. By far the vast majority of members/posters here are unable to correctly and precisely define the statistical arbitrage in an alpha neutral strategy that uses mean reversion to trade equity pairs. For sure a very select few can - but not many. We do considerable work tracking traders who operate alpha neutral mean reversion methodologies in the statistical arb of pair trading in equity index futures. At the micro level where the amplitudes of departure from the mean of the pair price more resembles a hum than a spike you can easily spot the commercial, auto-executed, mean reversion trades by viewing indicators of the intensity of commercial trade. The chart below shows such spikes. You can see that there were out of sequence spikes in all 3 major US equity futures at precisely the same time. That indicator is further discussed here
  20. UrmaBlume
    A friend recently sent me the article below. We are starting our first hybrid cross of a hedge fund and prop shop and I found it particularly interesting: THE RECESSION AND HOW TO LIVE THROUGH IT by Charles Potts POSTED BY Charles Potts Reposted from January 2009—because it still applies… —Ed. January 28, 2009 THE RECESSION AND HOW TO LIVE THROUGH IT by Charles Potts [Arthur editor] Jay Babcock has tempted me with the phrase, “It would be great if you wrote something on this subject,” referring to the subject line of his email, “The recession and how to live through it.” I’ll take the bait. This is more than a recession. This is going to be a huge depression, with the “recovery” way off in the distance. A recession, per Christopher Wood, desk chair person for The Economist in Tokyo circa 1995, is “a superabundance of inventory, and can be melted off the shelf; a depression is a superabundance of capacity” and takes much longer to get out of. Remember that it took the bean counters in Wash DC a full year to confirm the economy was in recession, and there’s a lot of over-the-counter chatter about how this recession is already longer than the one in, take your pick: 1976-1980-1991-etc. However, look around you and notice the superabundance of capacity. The industrial hind end of Europe, Japan, the US and China plus all else, can easily produce multiple times more automobiles, cell phones, TVs, computers, refrigerators, et al. than anybody with funds can buy. This is the fourth major deflationary price collapse in the past 600 years. In the three previous price collapses, there was a long period afterward when prices did not recover their pre-fall levels for decades. Prices last collapsed hard in 1815 after Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo; the period from 1815-1896 has been called by economists The Victorian Equilibrium. Many things contributed to this low-level stability, but it is sobering to realize there was scant inflation in the United States during the 19th century. (Inflation, by the by, is not necessarily a bad thing. Inflation simply moves assets around the game board from creditors to debtors; it doesn’t actually destroy anything except purchasing power if all you have is cash. In deflation, which we’re going through now, cash will buy a lot. During inflation it is better to have hard assets that increase in value at least at the same rate as cash.) Will it take eight decades before the world economy is go-go again? My reference to 1815 isn’t casual. I just re-read David Hackett Fischer’s The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. His book is about the three previous big price collapses: in the early 14th century when the Black Death ended the so called “Middle” ages; then, circa 1492, when prices collapsed during the Renaissance, and we encircled ourselves globally; and the aforementioned 1815. What’s so crucial about 1815 is it is also the date and the event that Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West) identifies as the moment Western culture went sideways and into “civilization,” cf. Napoleon at Waterloo. Fischer’s graphs of how the prices rose and fell, can be superimposed one over another. This collapse we’re in, the big one for the rest of our lives, started 20 years ago in Japan in 1989, has hit Argentina and most of Latin America, Russia twice now, and finally the big fish, the rest of Europe and the US. Even Doha is scaling back! The powers that be with their printing presses will print money and throw it at the wall until enough of it sticks. Some activities will appear to return to normalcy. But you shouldn’t wait for the influx of money to turn deflation into inflation, just as you shouldn’t wait for the bailout to trickle down to you. Unemployment is going to increase and stay high for some time. Challenging moments are upon us. My advice in hard times would be the same in good times: find something you love to do and master it, become as good as or better at it than anyone has any reason to be. Look up the people who do it really well right now. Study the masters. A musical instrument, a physical activity, painting, movies, art of all kinds, the writing of poetry or other books, whatever makes you feel better about yourself and contributes to our well being. Try enough things until you are satisfied that your fascination with the subject will lead to mastery. Six or eight hours of focused effort a day should suffice. I think this is reasonable advice, coming from an old man who has squandered most of his life by being interested in too many things to master any of them. We don’t exist as individuals; we exist as the sum total of our relationships. You’ll need all the friends you can get, so be honest, fair and generous in your dealings with other people. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or take unseemly risks. The future does not belong to the risk aversive. It will be difficult to get rich in the onrushing hard times, but it will be easy to get poor or poorer. Watch where your money goes. Make sure you get good value for it. Avoid buying things you don’t really need. Add value to your activities by putting forth effort. Expect others to do the same. Spend time with children and if you have children of your own, take the time to understand the world from their point of view. Assets are things that have to be used up creating additional assets. Almost without exception, your biggest asset is your time. I could have gotten rich teaching a seminar I created called “Seize the Day,” essentially a series of sensory exercises to stimulate your imagination to take over and live your own life. But I preferred life in a small town and didn’t want to see the inside of every airport and convention center in the country. Maybe it’s time to skip the addictions, look up old friends, or visit long-lost relatives. Life is a gift of such presurpassing value that we sometimes hardly notice. Learn to appreciate simple things, the taste of water, the odor of flowers, the great way gravity contributes to your ability to walk and run. Some of the things people love to do and do well don’t pay that much: poetry for example. Nobody really gives much of a **** anymore if you can understand the world and set it to music. You have to feed yourself, and if a family, contribute to their well-being. You may find yourself bearing an overload of dissonance, earning your daily bread and wishing, as the Colorado poet and painter Joe Lothamer said, “I dream of being a janitor.” Every changed circumstance contains opportunities, which accrue to the first people to recognize them. Since circumstances are in constant flux, there is a steady stream of opportunities. Learn to spot them and make them your own. Keep the basics in mind. People will still be buying food even if the rest of the consumer economy blows completely up, as it so richly deserves to. Heal the sick, wake the dead, feed the hungry. Food shelter and clothing. Eat slowly and chew your cud well. Cheers UB .
  21. UrmaBlume
    IMHO 30 or less round trips in not enough of a sample space to produce dependable results. The reliability of such tests increases, not with the passage of time, but, rather, with an increase in the number of transactions. In one of your examples you show less than 10 transactions and that's not enough to count on for anything, IMHO.
  22. UrmaBlume
    MarketPosition will never be -2. MarketPosition can only be 1 or 0 or -1, however MarketPosition * CurrentShares could be -2.
  23. UrmaBlume
    A few weeks ago I had occasion to chat with the leadership of the TS development team and they acknoledged certain issues with the TS Trade Manager. They say that TS v 9.0 will be out this summer and among the changes will be a millisecond time stamp and EL orders will become "smart objects." As their oldest customer I was about to bail on them which would have meant a major migration effort as over the years we have written over 2k EL code modules.
  24. UrmaBlume
    Almost 10 years ago a couple of my math and programming guys got together and built some, for then, state of the art handicapping software. These reports and the software are not for sale and this is not an advertisement but here is a short movie that demonstrates what some say is the state of the art in sports handicapping. I did much better using it with baskeball rather than pro-football becasure there are so many more games from which to gather perfromance data.
  25. UrmaBlume
    Cory, Thanks for the kind words. I applaud your hard work and your forward looking and willingness to consider and explore beyond the SameO conventional understanding when it comes to the market profile in specific and technical analysis in general. In my experience it has been those who are more interested in learning than trying to make a point that go the distance. I learn a lot from and welcome dialogue with smart, open, honest, hard-working, up and comers like yourself. Again thanks for your time today and thanks for the kind words. cheers
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