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Pit Noise: Trading with an Edge
By
Soultrader, in Market Internals
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Well said. This principle is highly analogous to trading. Any human can easily click buy or sell when they "feel" that price is about to go up or down. The problem with feeling, commonly referred to as "instinctive" trading, is that it cannot be quantified. And because it cannot be quantified, it cannot be empirically tested. Instinctive trading has the lowest barrier to entry and therefore returns the lowest reward. As this is true for most things in life, this comes as no surprise. Unfortunately, the lowest barrier to entry is attractive to new traders for obvious reasons. This actually applied to me decades ago.🤭 It's only human nature to seek the highest amount of reward in exchange for the lowest amount of work. In fact, I often say that there is massive gray area between efficiency and laziness. Fortunately, losing for a living inspired me to investigate the work of Wall Street quants who refer to us as "fishfood" or "cannonfodder." Although I knew that we as retail traders cannot exploit execution rebates or queues like quants do, I learned that we can engage in automated scalp, swing, and trend trading. The thermonuclear caveat here, is that I had no idea how to write code (or program) trading algorithms. So I gravitated toward interface-based algorithm builders that required no coding knowledge (see human nature, aforementioned). In retrospect, I should never have traded code written by builder software because it's buggy and inefficient. However, my paid subscription to the builder software allowed me to view the underlying source code of the generated trading algo--which was written in MQL language. Due to a lack of customization in the builder software, I inevitably found myself editing the code. This led me to coding research which, in turn, led me to abandoning the builder software and coding custom algo's from scratch. Fast forward to the present, I can now code several trading strategies per day across 2 different platforms. Considering how inefficient manual backtesting is, coding is a huge advantage. When a new trading concept hits me, I can write the algo, backtest it, and optimize it within an hour or so--across multiple exchanges and symbols, and cycle through hundreds of different settings for each input. And then I get pages upon pages of performance metrics with the best settings pre-highlighted. Having said all of this, I am by no means an advanced programmer. IMHO, advanced programmers write API gateways, construct their own custom trading platforms, use high end computers with field programmable gateway array chips, and set up shop in close proximity to the exchanges. In any event, a considerable amount of work is required just to get toward the top of the "fishfood"/"cannonfodder" pool. Another advantage of coding is that it forces me to write trade entry and exit conditions (triggers) in black & white, thereby causing me to think microscopically about my precise trade trigger conditions. For example, I have to decide whether the algo should track the slope, angle, and level of each bar price and indicator to be used. Typing a hard number like 50 degrees of angle into code is a lot different than merely looking at a chart myself and saying, that's close enough. Code doesn't acknowledge "maybe" nor "feelings." Either the math (code) works (is profitable) or doesn't work (is a loser). It doesn't get angry, sad, nor overly optimistic. And it can trade virtually 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. If you learn to code, you'll eventually reach a point where coding an algo that trades as you intended provides its own sense of accomplishment. Soon after, making money in the market merely becomes a side effect of your new job--coding. This is how I compete, at least for now, in this wide world of trading. I highly recommend it. -
By Stocks4life · Posted
VRA Vera Bradley stock watch, pull back to 5.08 support area at https://stockconsultant.com/?VRA -
By Stocks4life · Posted
MU Micron stock watch, pull back to 102.83 gap support area with high trade quality at https://stockconsultant.com/?MU -
By Stocks4life · Posted
ACLX Arcellx stock watch, trending at 84.6 support area with bullish indicators at https://stockconsultant.com/?ACLX -
Here’s something few are talking about: The Chinese are printing money like it's going out of style. Not that you'd hear about it in the mainstream news. But Bitcoin knows. Bitcoin always knows. Here’s the thing… When the Chinese government prints money to paper over the cracks, their smart money doesn't sit around waiting to get devalued. It usually flows into three things: Bitcoin, gold, and dollars. After years of being beaten down, gold's having one of its best years in decades. But here's the secret -- whatever gold does, Bitcoin's going to do it bigger. Much bigger. Since last November, when China started their printing spree, Bitcoin's been moving in near-perfect correlation with the People's Bank of China's balance sheet. Over 80% correlation, maybe even 90%. Again, few are talking about it. But here's why this matters right now: This could be the beginning of a huge breakout in the crypto markets. Bitcoin broke above its July high, and historically, that's led to new all-time highs over 90% of the time. The only times it failed? COVID and the 2022 bear market. That's it.” – Chris Campbell Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
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