One more thought.. Louis... Some one once related a story about an experiment involving 40 Phds who were given a trading account and an excellent system that was very profitable. At the end of the experiment, all but 2 of the 40 had blown out their accounts.
Moral: There's more to trading than a good system. It MUST match the trader's personal profile, time constraints, expectations, etc., or no matter how good it is HE will fail. I suggest some soul searching.. WHAT... do you want to accomplish? How can you go about accomplishing it? (time, patience, can you stick to a rigorous plan and strategy? that sort of thing) This isn't easy.. If it were, we'd all be rich and no one would be working for a living. M ----- Original Message ----- From: Louis P. To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [amibroker] Re: Futures or stocks? Hi Brian, When you talk about a mentor, do you mean someone on the forum? I am open to your idea; however I wonder how a mentor could help me if I don't know yet what exactly I am trying to do... Hmm, or to put it as TomC said, why would someone who know how to write a great code doing mentorate or selling his system while he could just sit and watch his bank account grow? That been said, of course I'd like some help. I know nobody using Amibroker except for this group. You are right about impulsiveness; this is a major problem for me. And as trading is concerned, to me having a system is the only way I can go around this, as I have no problem to follow guidelines in which I have full confidence. (It reminds me about chess; I knew automatic moves of some opening up to move 21 and I amazed everyone playing those moves automatically. I never feared to do it because I was 100% sure they were the best moves. The only thing I had to do was to keep them in my memory. Now, it is the opposite. I must find the moves and AB will keep them in its memory!) But I need to be able to build that system. Maybe my problem is that I have too good an example. As I said, I know someone who made a consistant 35%/year in the last 10 years (and over 50% in the last 2-3 years) so my goal is to improve over his discretionaty technique as this would allow me to sell my ideas or to work with him to implement them. Maybe this is asking too much. I don't know. I just know that I probably wouldn't be able (or would want to) to do discretionary trading as he does. To me discretionary trading looks like a dinosaur trying to use a IPhone. (Sorry for those who use it; that's just how I feel with it). Thanks, Louis 2008/8/1 brian_z111 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Louis, Gee you are a good sport. > Brian is right when he says I am sipping the soup on a > lot of tables but never stay for the meal. I was mulling over your situation last evening (my time) and came to a conclusion. I wasn't going to say anything but since you brought it up again. You have had a bad exeperience in the markets before - BAD EXPERIENCES make strong lasting impressions on us. Basically you have 'fear of failure' - you don't sit down to the meal because you don't want the experience of a bad meal - you just cant face up to that. Possibly temperament or other life experiences are amplifying this. The anTidote is quite simple - PREPARATION (practise, paper trading etc). Pick something, anything, and go all the way with it - right up to paper trading at your brokers. If it fails pick something else, and repeat, until you get a good one. Then when you are sure keep practising a bit more, then practise some more again until you are so over prepared that it is a joke - then if it is still a good 'system' go ahead and trade with small amounts of money only (if it has a bad turn it will only be a small negative experience and you can cope with that). Grit your teeth and learn to eat a lot of bad meals gracefully (in trading over 90% of what we do never pays a dime). For example, when I started trading I read books like "The Market Wizards" that recounted the anecdotal trading stories of super succesful traders and I noticed that a lot of the 'famous' traders went boom and bust early in their careers - some of them more than once - before they learnt not to do that anymore (pretty dumb huh). I promised myself I would NEVER have a strong negative market experience, as in 'get smashed' (I accpet my share of controlled losses, yes, but getting smashed, no). Why? ... because I don't need NEGATIVE experiences to learn to trade. POSITIVE experience is a much better teacher. MAKE YOUR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES VIRTUAL EXPERIENCES UNTIL YOU DON'T HAVE THEM ANY MORE - THEN START TRADING. Impulsiveness is your weakness - if you don't control it, it will control you. I still think you should consider buying a system or getting a mentor to help you get started but then you want if for free, right? brian_z --- In [email protected], "Louis P." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi group, > > The last thread which I started really helped me to realize a lot of things, > one of them is that Brian is right when he says I am sipping the soup on a > lot of tables but never stay for the meal. > > I'd like change that. > > I would like to concentrate on a particular kind of market (actions or > futures) and a particular timeframe (1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, > daily,etc). > > I know I may get zillions of different responses, but what do you consider > to be the more promising? > > I've read that more and more people consider futures are the future (haha!) > because of the high volatility and trading opportunities. Is this true? If > yes, how much money do I need to trade them? I've heard you need a lot! > And do I need to be there watching for 24 hours a day? And what about > stocks and ETF? I'd like to read some people opinion about what they > consider to be the most promising way... > > Of course, I won't start threads like this every two days! ;-) I'm just > really thinking about this all and am tired to switch markets, timeframe, > strategies, plans, all the time. I'd like to choose something and stay with > it. But I want to choose what's most promising! > > Thanks! > > Louis > No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.10/1585 - Release Date: 8/1/2008 6:39 AM ____________________________________________________________ Click to get information on owning your own franchise. Great products. Low entry cost. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3oKL7s6WQ1JtQyrQqu5GXbISuJBP3jdPztakeBcEvqezMnpM/
