SIUYA

20 years of study and thought so that it only takes 5 mins a day or even less if there is nothing to see. (and for the Dude, yes there are different ways of seeing and doing things as its not what is shown its how you see it that is important. Nice of you to want to save people from themselves but i reckon the problem is people are constantly searching for new ways to see things as opposed to learning how to see. All very zen BS in a never ending roundabout - welcome to Monday, horoscope for the day says sell in May and go away.)

LOL shock horror - its back to where it was early March and still remains a s..t boring instrument. Best book your holidays here now to come and pick up the gold lying in the streets - just watch out for the crocs and nicky narks in the toilets and the bunyips in the trees. (it is about due (for want of a better word) a decent move down IMHO) regards

a good summary of it can be found here - mainly for US residents and it depends on what type (and size ) of account you can use. Margin Requirements In the UK (and elsehwhere), spreadbetting and CFDs allows even more leverage (ie; less margin)

hook line and sinker

gee i am confused now - i am not sure if the gold market went down because of; the govt, (i think i will now cal them the govvt - with two v's - i decided to print another one), the media scaring everyone (thats their job - but we are not sure who they represent anymore) the retail mums and dads who panicked - beause they are the dumb money the instiutions who benchmark the banks and the likes of GS - just because they are evil the paper shorts the real shorts the same paper shorts that helped pushed gold up in the first place or simply those who took a wrong bet on gold and were late to the party, or overleveraged, or simply trading and dumping some long term holdings - eg; normal market stuff. now i dont know if gold is a safe haven, or a bubble, real or paper, or simply all an illusion. Too may opinions.....too many choices....i think i will stick to where the real wealth lies - wine! A new fund, that buys wine and stores it....2% and 20% fees..... One thing i am pretty sure of is, most of this is not new and most of the perma bulls and bears are actually running a pyramid scheme of news and ideas if you think about it - they keep quoting each other in a circular fashion just to keep their dreams alive. There is some delusion that the gold bulls seem to have that the $1600 an oz they paid is real but the price if they wanted to sell today is not....all good if you buy and hold for ever and it keeps you warm at night. (I wonder if in the new SHTF world what will be the currency of choice if the gold bulls dont sell to buy food )

Bob - Ozzztralia aint got no gold, its a myth we have you fellas beleiving (like the stuff in fort knox) (Apart the stuff we been hoarding in our knicker drawers) Just golden beaches nice girls and cold beers - all that other stuff we just been diggin it up and floggin it to the Chinese trying to get some dough before the govt really stuffs us up the kybosh. The rest is a fricken desert both geographically and culturally, so they can have it. Given coal and iron ore have already been shot, and we are as racists as you can get - but the bloody education system is soooo good they keep coming here from all over (its our third largest export didnt ya know) and the aussie just wont take a dive - probably because of those flamming high interest rates above 2% - the galahs in Canbra dont know squat and will ruin it like them other idjits overseas in them older countries. No wonder everyone left there and came here. if the ozzy falls it might get them tourists back here - except its sooo fircken expensive here now you have to sell your grandmother to get much more than a cold slab on a Friday nights shindig and the service aint much to boot....you want something, help yourself.... for that 2 cents - leave your money on the fridge and dont touch the bloody kingswood on the way out.

thanks - i was scratching my head on the numbers - reminds me a lot of the 'baskets' some larger investors talk about and the rebalancing between 0 and 100% for various instruments (or -100 to +100%) The arguments to me are not really arguments - they always seem to me to be either justification to themselves that their view is right despite the immediate reality that their positon is wrong, OR a sales pitch for what ever product they are pushing....that is what makes me laugh. I would often prefer the shock as its such a rare event - some talking head to say - 'f...k me i have no idea what happened, all i know is my PL got torn a new ass hole (or i aced it) and for that i am dissapointed (or pleased) and should assess what i am going to do now '- instead the part that is funny is that they still are predicting the future when they cant agree on the past and their opinions often have nothing to do with the reasons why..... (its a rant of mine against sales folk) As for the govt etc; i dont think its entirely off topic, but i am more talking about the recent move in gold and i dnt think that is so much govt influenced as some others might think. (not saying you do )

the answer to your question is largely this article reminded of the same circular boring discussions. yeah I probably should have put it more into the other thread about randomness as everyone has an opinion on it, they all think they are right and most of the talk is rubbish. On re reading your original question - wrong thread - sorry.... ....... so as to your original question... "Assuming everyone contributes toward creating the non random structure within the real data ......... What is the markets structure? What is the non randomness that distinguishes(differentiates) real and random data? It has to be human behavior and in real live data you are actually trying to pick up patterns of human behavior. Real data does not rely on being totally random, we have biases and context, rational and irrational thought, real life news, opinions etc; etc; If you think markets bounce off support because of magic or that its random then that’s being naive. Orders in markets are based on the past for various reasons and the expectations of the future – they are not random. The patterns we choose to see might be random, but the price levels of orders are not. I dont think it makes any difference - if the market data is random or non random we are all attempting to place it into some sort of discernible structure from which we can make sense of it, analyses it and profit from it; Which is why money management and letting a position run is important. The only real value true (or as close to) random data has is its ability to strengthen our models of the market for robustness of that model. Most models of the market still wont make any real money, even those that make money in testing real and in random data will be likely to make less than estimated in real life, but they might give us a better expectation of what to expect should that model be applied without the added subjective input of a trader on a daily basis. Maths and statistics ….. ignore it at your peril, but this is not everything. (no matter how many people try and tell you their opinion is right – relates to the article – Darwins ideas don’t set hard and fast rules but context determines a lot, ignore the predictions, look at- but -question the data and learn to anticipate what others will do) Even the great modellers and systematic traders of the market constantly update their models or use multiple ones as the market always changes. The markets structure is different therefore can be whatever it is we want to box it into – the way we see it ebb and flow and how we can then profit from that - be it that we see patterns that might be entirely random but we are still able to apply some money management, and extra context for that pattern – that’s all we need to care about IMHO and if we want to understand markets then understanding human behaviour helps take some of the randomness out of the data.

i think you are being generous here .....my guess is many watch paint dry to try and grab the illusion of 40 ticks, but end up only taking 10, while those few that are sucessful take far more than 40. This maybe be one of the end results of why many traders fail - what causes this is the elephant in the room in the discussion.

Hi Zdo, what numbers are you referencing there..... (.93 passed 24)....(.28 through the 40s) i dont trade or hold gold, and neither bull or a bear but if pushed to make a choice of opinion....i would be bearish as i dont think gold has any value, but equally so bullish as their might be enough people who need something alternative of value at particular times.....guess that makes me a trader. and i do love the arguements from both perm bulls and bears and the reality that probably 40% of the time they will be both be right....the other 20% is up for grabs. The funny thing about it all is they are still arguing about what caused the recent move down when they really dont know, and then they still think they can predict the future as of course they do know about that :doh:

all this talk about randomness poped into my head when reading this news/infovertisement What to do when everyone is right .............

A game of musical chairs....but also an interesting experiment in decentralisation....or is it centralisation (I sometimes cant tell) At best it might make people think more about ideas of exchange, the technology might be interesting to develop from this, and it might force competition on the banks transaction fees - otherwise it wil have the same issues many forms of exchange will have regards, theft, trust, manipulation, volatility, etc; etc. .....a good history http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/

i use SC, but i dont code in C++ What you are wanting to do here might be easily acheiveable (and simpler for a non coder) using their spreadsheets for trading AS WELL AS attached orders (with each entry having easily adjustable take profits and stop loss orders associated with the original entry)

I stumbled across this.....by John Kay (John Kay - The key to the banks) The key to the banks Great size is a warning of trouble ahead in the banking industry; and the trouble may be for the taxpayer as much as the shareholder. We were just starting to get used to the extraordinary conjunctions of names in the City of London today. Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, ING Barings, SBC Warburg Dillon Reed. Goodness knows what the original wing-collared Mr Kleinwort and Mr Benson, Mr Morgan and Mr Grenfell, think of all this as they look down, stiff-necked and wing-collared, from their portraits in the lunch rooms. Still, we all knew this was the future. Big balance sheets were best in modern banking. Full service financial conglomerates would drive out other players. But suddenly no-one is quite so sure. UBS, having carelessly lost its chairman, is reviewing the scope of its activities. The continental universal banking scene is shaken, perhaps even stirred. The merger of UBS and SBC made the combined bank the largest in the world, measured by net assets. In achieving this, it pushed the Japanese bank Dai-Ichi Kangyo into tenth place in the world banking league. It is not long since Dai-Ichi Kangyo was the world’s largest bank. Not much longer since Citicorp held that position. Once, Bank of America was the biggest bank. And, within living memory, that title was held by Britain’s Midland, who ceded it to Barclays. Soon after, each of these banks not only lost their leading position, but dropped out of the top ten. Much the same thing happened to other banks from the same countries. Hard though it is to believe today, the British clearing banks once dominated the world banking scene. The Americans took over, although their growth was inhibited by restrictions on out of state retail banking: still, Citicorp, the largest bank in New York, and Bank of America, biggest in California, found their local areas more than sufficient to provide support for their wider ambitions. But by the end of the 1980s, the list of the largest banks was dominated by the French and the Japanese. Not any more. While the merger of Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi has kept one Japanese bank up with the leaders, the pole positions today are taken by continental Europeans: Deutsche, Credit Suisse, and the new UBS-SBC combine. This story has several important lessons for today’s ambitious bankers. Size has never been the key to future success in banking. Indeed size has almost invariably been a warning of problems to come. In most markets, you have to persuade customers to give you money: in lending, you only have to persuade them to accept it. That makes it rather easy to grow, but the growth can be subsequently reversed if the customers fail to pay it back. And that has happened rather often in banking history. We also see the insatiable herd instinct of bankers. Citicorp is constantly eyeing Bank of America, Barclays vying with National Westminster, SBC with UBS and Credit Suisse. Not daring to be left behind, they all make the same mistakes together. Much safer, in the banking world, to be wrong in good company than to be right alone. But the key lessons lie further below the surface. Banks as we know them originate in a time when they collected small savings to provide capital for businesses. The traditional local bank manager, his roots in the community, was well equipped to garner the deposits and assess the borrowers. Today, the skills of the financial services retailer are very different from those of the business banker. Securitisation of markets broke any necessary connection between taking deposits and making loans. In any case, large corporations could themselves access the capital markets on better terms than their bankers. The rationale for the traditional association of functions which we call a bank has simply disappeared, and most of these specific functions – retail marketing of financial services, financial advice to companies, monitoring the creditworthiness of large firms – are better done by some specialist institution which is not necessarily a bank. Still, big banks remain big companies by any standards. There is a particular advantage for big retail banks in becoming financial conglomerates. It is the opportunity to use their retail deposit base as collateral for unrelated and risky activities in securities markets such as trading, market making and placing. For banks that are big enough to be too big to fail – banks whose collateral is effectively underwritten by the world’s governments – this opportunity is particularly valuable. It is hard to believe that taxpayers would, if they focused on the issue, really choose to pledge their personal credit to allow banks to make speculative profits but in practice they have little choice. National banks have to compete internationally, and the attempt by the United States to enforce the separation of retail and investment banking ultimately proved unsuccessful. But the results are clear. Banks with large retail deposits have competitive advantages in providing other financial services that have nothing whatever to do with the skills and competences of these organisations – often the reverse. And regulation whose primary purpose is to protect small savers and investors has to be extended to the full range of wholesale market activities that big banks engage in. Perhaps, if we were to have a world financial services regulator, this might be an issue to consider. Or perhaps, the issue will resolve itself. The problems which arise because retail deposits are pledged in support of proprietary trading, the problems which arise because the skills needed for a derivatives operation are very different from those of retail bankers, are not just problems for the world financial system. They are internal control and management problems for financial conglomerates themselves. And it will not be surprising if more companies come to the conclusion in the next few months that these management issues are too hard to handle. .........most interesting thing out of all this was it was supposedly written 14 October 1998, Financial Times --- the same old normal. I also thought Zdo you might appreciate this article which originally drew me to his website. John Kay - Prosperity requires more than rule of law

i change my mind all the time... and i dont really get what this means..... am i not appreciating it as in not giving it enough worth/value or simply not getting it? maybe i am with you on some but not other things. Its partially a chicken and egg thing - which affects us more - our fears and self worth values (brought up more by Rande - i dont think too much about this) etc, or our desire for control (my puppy)(based maybe on a fear). if we are all fear based then why do people seek enlightenment? - because they fear their thoughts or they want to control them? I just see it all differently - and dont think everything is fear based, but control based, (chicken or egg, and this thought process works for me) Turning this to trading....until people can accept that they cannot control the market - despite all the other fears, despite all their issues of self worth, despite their meddling - which the market does not know or care about. Sitting in a cave might give you enlightenment but it still wont convince you that you have no control over the markets, trading the ES might give you enlightment but only if you accept the market will do its own thing regardless of your meddling, regardless of all the planning, the training, the thought, the fears you have. Its a bit like the weather - we can analyse it, forecast it, review it, but we cant do much about it - 99.9% of us accept this - yet 95% of us dont seem to fail at coping with it. Imagine a world like that. we would all be taking our tops of when it is raining in the expectation that by doing so we would bring out the sun - good for some

Hi Rande, gotcha, thanks. Re Plan.... I agree in order for this issue to be nutted out we have to assume the traders talked about, do have a plan, do have some form of discipline and self control, they have tested it etc....In other words, they have the building blocks and have done the hard work. Re Previous success... Agree - many people have found success in other fields and this success is usually not as a result of the reasons they assign to it. Often people attribute success to hard work, focus, discipline etc; when it fact it might be a lucky break (one is all it needs in some businesses as luck gets smoothed out in trading), a good network of people, others in an organisation, good sales technique (you cant wine and dine a market) Also - the same approach to these reasons for success might not translate well into trading if they are applied incorrectly. eg; is persistence a fine line between stubbornness or perseverance....you get the general drift. and yes - previously for them its all about controlling outcome - perfectly said. In the case of trading the distinction probably needs to be emphasized that -they have no control over the outcome of the market, -the only thing they have any control over is their individual trade plan, and -the control over how they manage a position. (I guess I shy away from the proving of value to someone else and the associated issues. For me its simpler - the market dont care....period --- ) I also guess that while many do suffer the cross, I wonder if this complicates it further than the simpler version.... If someone does not have this cross to bear BUT they still cant accept the lack of control over the outcome then they will have the same issues. ................... So does this then not raise two different separate (they may or may not be related) possibilities for why a trader who has done the hard work might be failing?.... 1...fear - emotional overrides circumnavigating the plan and hard work 2..proving value of worth. or can these be lumped together in the respect that they have not accepted that they cant control things - either because they feel the need to overcome the fears first, or to prove worth, as opposed to accepting s..t happens. (I am with DbP in this regard, you must also have a reason/rationale/philosophy for how the market moves, but the danger in this is you might be proved wrong exacerbating the issues - i guess testing will show this, but as my take is more control related then this point may not be so relevant.) and is maybe the solution for some of these folks simply to stop trading particularly if other aspects of their lives are in good shape.

additionally, what is the buy and hold return for the same period? or what is the get set long only, and use a stop of 7 days below the entry, but not an exit above the entry....ie; you let things run once in an established position that trends. Comparing these might give an insight into costs as well as risk return costs of purely day trading. (Otherwise I am sure everyone appreciates the ideas jswanson - thanks)

like her or loathe her.....from the Daily Telepgraph London..... Baroness Thatcher's financial wit and widsom did more to change the way that many British people think about money than most politicians or economists. Here are a few of her insights: "No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had money as well." "Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth." "I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation." "It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs." "My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police." "It's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election." "Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan." "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." "The facts of life are Conservative."

Rande - it will be interesting to see what you come up with.... While everyone touches on it - you need a plan, you need self responsibility, you need discipline, you need to understand probabilities (All of which i agree with as DBP , you and Steve say and think most people dont do these anyways ).....there are two related things that i think everyone misses that go with these important building blocks....in order to do them proper justice. These simple things are..... 1...your previous success was probably not as a result of the traits you think you have of self discipline, responsibility and planning etc;....trading will reveal this and reveal your true strengths and weaknesses - and you will probably not recognize yourself. Get used to it as it is unlikely to be pretty. Then you can either live in denial or not. This belief that you as an individual controlled everything and made things happen because of who you think you are....probably not. (For all those success stories and BS of just work hard, be focused, never take no for an answer....well there are plenty of failures who followed the same ideas and had the same traits.) 2....(IMHO this is the most important for trading)-- control. The acceptance that you really have very little control over what happens. You think you can control the entry and exits (and this is debatable), but that is about it. The market does what it wants with or without you. Rande, you mention one them with the idea that the mind you bring to trading is not the ideal traders mind....but I am thinking its not then about mental development, self development etc; but more a simple acceptance that - we have little control over things. Maybe traders need to revert rather than grow.....or this has more to do with Zdos thoughts on flow....creativity and letting go of control. ......... .......... Now many might disagree with this and of course its all up for discussion and maybe i am not explaining myself well, or maybe this germ of an idea that has been brewing in my mind will be washed away by the sands of time....but i will give a few examples of what i am trying to explain in a question type format and to see if people relate or dont relate..... Q: why is it that we are desperate to get into a trade and once in we are desperate to get out? Q: why is it we think that once in the markets the markets will respond to our wills, plans, hopes and what if scenarios? Q: why is it people move stops around and second guess their original trades (based on plans and tests and reviews) when the market does not care about their individual trade, strategy, circumstances, hopes, stops or take profits. Q: why is it people think the market will bounce off a level but then worry that it wont once they have a trade on? The list can go on..... A lot of this it this seems hard wired into our brains - our idea of control. We think we control our environment. e think we can control many things....but in the market we dont..... no matter how good the plan, the sales pitch, the training, the review, the manufacturing process, the customer base, the mentoring process.....what ever process we have to build success in trading or elsewhere..... once you have a trade in the market you have to completely surrender to the market. Yes, you can monitor it, review it, move stops based on the plan and testing, exit, re-enter.....but these dont give you control over the market. They only control your individual trade risk in the market. IMHO this goes deeper than just accepting uncertainties in an uncertain world or market. Maybe just maybe, those traders who do the planning, take responsibility and review etc, if they are not doing it with a mindset that is based on this acceptance, then they are doing it from a mindset that all this planning will let them be in control --- and this is when the self sabotage occurs. They think that after all their hard work they are in control when in fact they have not really accepted they are not.

i dont but you can using insurance....(I just saw DbP pointeed out the same thing) There are also carbon credits and weather futures.....plus backing sporting teams and horses odds change with regards the weather conditions I was more laughing at the quote "But gold is a natural thing" How often people think that because something is natural it is 'good' or has some sort of positive value....does it then mean anything not natural cannot be valued.... (Take this in the light hearted approach it is intended - or dont)

There is soooooo much one could say about this - from commenting on market timing, buy and hold, the money management industry and professional advice and advisory firms, issues around fear or loss and fear of missing out, get out when the doctors and taxi drivers get in etc its f....n ridiculous. So I think i will leave it with a quote from my favorite philosopher “I’ve got plenty of common sense…. I just choose to ignore it.” - Calvin and Hobbes

I am making lots of assumptions here...... i) no such thing - some are just harder than others and require different strengths and styles that perform better. Sounds like if you tried them all you did not work out which style suits you, why it would work and how you would make it work. You should at least have one that you predominately favour, stuck with and prefer. ii) should have been worked out in testing and shown to work, and shown to suit 1) iii) wrong targets (if price targets -then testing a review should reveal this) if expectations then most likely yes - forget the BS - be realistic - be properly capitalised, get a good solid consistent return - not some BS shoot the lights out. This should all be part of why you are doing it. (I would not open a sandwich shop and think i will become a billionarie unless i have some usp to be able to turn it into a worldwide franchsie AFTER the first shop works) iv) dont blame the tools - of if you are doing so then quit. v) see iii vi) WTF - are you trading for yourself or do you have a completely different business whereby you have to try and meet investor expectations as well. vii) possibly - there is no shame in that.....and maybe your strengths are better suited elsewhere. Smarts are not required. There is no shame in trying failing, learning and moving on. I worked out once very quickly i would hate to be a lawyer/salesperson/fundamental analyst (thank god it was a quick discovery) Persistence and learning from mistakes is a good thing, persistence and repeating the same mistakes because you dont learn from failure is idiotic. Maybe the mistake is not in your trading at all. It also sounds if you were day trading for 9 years you dont need the money - or you were not really day trading......

Looking forward to further installments Zdo.....and no there is no prima donna in it compared to some threads. Based on my 3am insight/interpretation - (which might have been more a different interpretation of what you are thinking rather than an insight) then i would think the idea of a healthy trader mind is a good sub thread...... As for tools (and really off topic ideas/analogies) - the rabid defense of the current tools (the 3 pillars, the 3 free reports, the 3 things that most traders are advised to do but simply dont) - maybe the defense is because the tools are not used, and are more an excuse to portray a self image....and the idea that you can be trading by the end of the day - even when new traders are reminded to read the rest of the instructions - this takes time, effort, thought. There are no templates. Have you ever seen a rabidly defended tool (eg; a hammer, golf club, fishing rod) that sits in the shed unused apart from the occasional DIY, but it is defended like a long lost brother, yet left in the shed gathering dust......as opposed to really understanding and bonding with that hammer, sleeping with it and caressing it, and using that hammer for all manner of creative (just to tie that in) uses. Looking forward to more rants.....and ideas of possible new tools and solutions.

i am sure there are better places than this thread for it, but strangely I find it apt PIMCO | Investment Outlook - ?A Man in the Mirror

so are tornadoes, tidal waves, and earthquakes - I dont know how to value those either :haha: