amory

Thanks Mitsubishi! that is most instructive & entertaining. But I feel that both your political views & your gift for clever dialogue are misplaced in the context of this thread. Where you tell us that a computer will freeze if given a multitude of tasks .. good thing the people who send out probes to explore the planet Mars & beyond never knew that. Because compared to that effort, teaching a computer to do what we are trying to do .. beat the market .. should be child's play. I will concede one point: the program has to be reasonably intelligent. In other words, the team .. uh-oh here he goes trolling again, would have to more or less agree on the basic principles they're going to teach poor old HAL. No use overtaxing his simplistic brain. P.S. the Japanese when they invaded Manchuria & Nanking back in 1937, they didn't worry too much about international law. That's not their car you're driving, is it?

Hi there Colonel! I like your aggressive attitude .. a military background, no doubt. I reckon there is nothing like a direct confrontation to clear the air. What would you rather do? confront an enemy force that by far outnumbers you .. but you can see them, fight them! or drive your humvee thru a minefield or maybe into a roadside bomb trap, hoping for the best? Your answer will reveal a lot about how you handle the market. The suggestion that I am trolling .. I find that insulting. I am merely offering a practical suggestion .. if some of you guys find it of value, go ahead & use it & leave me out, it makes no difference to me. Do I have an advantage over others in the markets I attempt to trade .. reply negative. But I keep trying to learn from every mistake & to improve on the methodology as best I can. Note: I never said that the computer should do the trading (for myself alone or for a group with collective input) .. only the resulting system would be SHARED (that's the operative word, is it not?) but it would still be up to the individual participant to make up his/ her mind whether to act on it. Finally, back to my comparison with chess computers: Bobby Fischer who was a chess genius, said similar to what you are saying .. ("... man has not found a way to teach a computer to feel.") He worded it somewhat differently: that a computer has no imagination, that chess is to a great extent a game requiring intuition .. well, he's been proved wrong! I wonder have they as yet been able to teach a computer to learn from its mistakes??? Anyway, I am glad we are at least discussing it .. like the middle east peace talks, it may lead nowhere, but it should be done!

seems to me we are deviating from the original purpose of this thread. Would you share? what's to share? does any one of us possess the perfect system? myself, offering to cooperate in the creation of it, preferably via a sophisticated computer program. for starters, that's what we need to share! by pooling our knowledge & experience. Myself, using a point system .. based on dynamics, MA's, various indicators as well as trends & bends. on charts that is, not news or fundamentals. OK to trade if I achieve 9 points out of 12. it works quite well for me, but it is slow & primitive. compared to what can be done, in order to achieve the perfect signals. the computer can be programmed to keep an eye on any number of items (myself specializing in Forex at the moment) and to analyze fifty or more clues & to give the go-ahead, all this within a couple of seconds. always provided it's been fed the right methods. back to my comparison with a super chess computer: the grandmasters who program it, teach it a few standard openings, all the moves & all the rules & regulations - we are looking at a few hundred of them, maybe more. whereupon it looks seven or eight moves ahead within seconds & beats its own mentors easily! that's the skill we've got to apply to the market.

Thank you Gekko, Siuya & everyone else who commented on my "offer to share" . I never suggested that the computer would take care of the Trading side of it. If we were going to work out something between us & fed it into a computer, we would then use it to tell us what & when to trade. Yes, there are such systems around - heaps of them, by the amount of mail I'm getting & each one claiming infallibility - all I am suggesting is that we can, between us, input what seems to work for us & program it in. Look back if you would, on some of your trades where you failed miserably (if that has never happened to you, then there is no need to read on). When you studied the trade, did you not ask yourself: WHY DID I NOT SEE THAT? OF COURSE IT WASN'T GOING TO WORK! Not enough Trend, or Momentum, or Dynamics etc. The intelligently programmed computer would have seen it (whatever it is). The human eye & brain can see it too, but not within the time that it takes to absorb all the info, process it & place the order on an active market. That last bit is the easy one: placing the order. All I need the computer for, is to tell me what & when. As I said in my original post: Conclusion: all that's required to create the necessary computer program in our line of endeavor, is for several clever people to stick their heads together & along with an expert programmer or two, feed all their clever ideas into it. Remember, there is no limit to what a computer can absorb & calculate. Or what the heck: work alongside your fund manager! I knew all along there must be an easier way.

any & all MA's have got something in common .. the Hull is as good as any. the trick is to find which "crosses" and other combinations .. with candles etc work best in a given environment. I have found the Zero-lag to be quite interesting. another observation is that most MA crossovers give the best results where there is a clearly defined TREND .. at least one will be given the choice between continuing to trade in the same direction or see an END-of-trend type curve - meaning get out! for inst, crossovers can be treacherous when they occur off an indecisive horizontal trend .. to pick the breakout there one must rely on a different set of indicators .. volatility, things like that.

as I see it, you look for a situation where the Candles are clustered all on one side of the green line (Zero-lag (20) enter the trade as soon as a candle closes across the green line, probably indicating change of trend. green thru Red (SMA 14) will confirm the new trend, stay with it! check out the two purple verticles on my chart .. the left one especially.

Thank IamJon .. well that clears that up. Seeing that it's the only additional window on Phantom's charts, it must be of some importance in the general scheme of things. I wonder if I am in close enough touch with the methodology, using mostly the One-hour timeframe? << Zero crossing is NOT the signal for this trade. The signal is a "failed test" of the fast line versus the slow line with the zero line being a filter for buys and sells. >> that alone will require a fair bit of comparison & study!

sorry to be dwelling on the MACD which I take it is not of primary importance, but this is what I get when calling up Properties for it: Parameters: Fast EMA, Slow EMA & MACD SMA .. so far so good. Colors: Main & Signal .. with no reference to the parameters. as if to say: Colors is what you asked for, colors is what you get! forget about Parameters .. although they do work, becoz the display does change in accordance with the input .. with one line missing. it is very strange.

hi Phantom .. I have only recently discovered this forum & been spending hours on your invaluable thread. I have studied your comments on the MACD & tried out the various combinations. Why is it that I can only ever get one signal-line? the MAC on this chart is the Linda Raschke, if I understand correctly. did you say that the lines should cross above/ below the zero line for buy/ sell respectively? that's if one can get the lines! Thanks for a tiring but very absorbing evening.

I hope I am not interrupting anything .. the heading of this thread had something about Black box systems in it, so I thought I might just ask a question: has anyone tried a robot system called CopyPastePips? not trying to open up a can of worms about how bad they all are .. I've got to where I feel that one way of losing money on Forex is as good as another .. hence my question. 108 winning trades in a row .. money back garantee & all that .. just asking, thanks.