Good/Bad Vendors

Well there sure seems to be a lot of new posts from new members regarding vendors. This to me is a sure sign that some of these are from vendors themselves. For example ..I would not be surprised if the Post from Wan ( with only one post ) contains the name of a vendor that is being promoted subtley on this forum. So that leaves Carolyn Boroden, The Trading Zoo or Larry Levine....time will tell if I am correct...this is a common vendor tactic but with that said lets talk about some vendors that some of us have had positive experiences with....I have no financial interest in any site or room I mention.....here is one to start that I encountered a few years ago
http://www.rjhtrading.com/ I forget the price I paid...

What I liked about this course is that it taught you the proper way (IMHO) to interpret price action and you where encouraged to be self sufficient. Lots of charts to reinforce the examples and not always "cherry-picked". It also went into money management and it didn't promise you riches overnight....it let you know that trading was hard work..They also had no guarantee and showed me no statements...

For the record some of the courses or items I may mention I have paid for and some have been shared with me by fellow traders......you can draw any conclusion about me from that statement. I guess the only person who can really give me a hard time about "sharing" trading materials is the person who never borrowed a book from the library or from a friend. Otherwise we are no different. Anyone else care to share a good experience. I fiqured with all the bad mouthing that is going on (I beleive in some cases to make themselves look better) it was time to put some positive information about some vendors out there....

Bruce

where Max? What about Puretick..?

forgive my ignorance but i dont see how a trader can get a mathematical edge over other traders on a consistent basis. isnt it a zero sum game among the participants? from what i read trading has a negative expectancy due to commissions and slippage.

i know alot about gambling. casinos have a built in edge by paying winners less than true odds on every single game and every single decision. a negative expectancy for the player. also ask any casino executive what percent of players lose and the answer will be a lot less than the trading business. so wheres the traders edge?

not ready to quit my day job yet.

max

simplewaytrading bruce. thought about puretick and liked what i read here but the subscription model is a turnoff. like renting a house instead of owning one. plus their focus is on ym not es.

max

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Originally posted by max

forgive my ignorance but i dont see how a trader can get a mathematical edge over other traders on a consistent basis.

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It is possible. Compare it to a table of 8 players of Texas Hold'em Poker. You are a math wiz and know all the probabilities. The other 7 don't. You have an edge on every hand because of that.

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...isnt it a zero sum game among the participants? from what i read trading has a negative expectancy due to commissions and slippage.

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Correct, it's a negative sum game because of costs.

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casinos have a built in edge by paying winners less than true odds on every single game and every single decision. a negative expectancy for the player. also ask any casino executive what percent of players lose and the answer will be a lot less than the trading business. so wheres the traders edge?

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I would say not. I don't know that actual figures but my guess is that more than 90% of casino players are losers. My guess would be that the casino produces more losers than the market place.

Incidentally, Hold'Em Poker is also a negative sum game because of the rake. Only the informal games that you play at home with your pals are zero sum games.

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You are a math wiz and know all the probabilities. The other 7 don't. You have an edge on every hand because of that.

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day, can you give an example of a trading setup or situation where a trader can know the probabilities? how high would those probabilties have to be to be considered an edge? if he did know the probabilities couldnt he get very rich? i also read that once a setup becomes exposed in the public domain it slowly loses its edge as the market adjusts.

i find all of this fascinating

max

To better understand what sort of edge you need to break even and to make money read the thread on Probabilities and download and play with the 4th version of that spreadsheet (on about page 4 or 5 of the thread). This will tell you how high your probability needs to be taking into account slippage and commissions.

There is rationale that once a setup is public and popular that its edge will be lost and pt_emini and I had some discussion about this on another thread (sorry can't remember what we called it) and how moving averages might be shortened to get in ahead of the crowd to prevent this decay of set-up and how this might cause the parameters of indicators to move in cycles with the markets. So not only do you need to select the right indicators you need to select a timeframe and amount by which to adjust the parameters as more traders start to use them.

I think this is a good place to post this Tip I found.

Sometimes we have to forget about all the hype and just think about what is really important.

If you have found yourself searching the web for trading support and come upon a site (more likely like a couple of hundred sites) that tells you the author has created a trading system that generated a rate of return that would be a work of art, it is time to start looking for the door. Yes, there will be a strategy and yes, he can say there were signals created but he often will not tell you how he created the system.

System developers use a tool called optimization. In the hands of an experienced developer or trader this is a tool that can help in fine-tuning an intelligently crafted system. Optimization takes the many variables in a system and allows a developer to test each combination and inform the developer, which set of variables, resulted in the best return. The combinations can be in the tens of thousands to be tested and this kind of work is exactly what computers were created for. After a short time there will be a presentation of the best set of variables. But understand this is just happenstance for that particular investment vehicle over that specific period of time.

Change the vehicle or use a different period of time for the back test and the results will most often be completely unrelated to the original optimized system test.

There is no shortage of developers that either do not know this or they know it or chose not to tell you the devious approach they have taken as they attempt to encourage you to send them some money for their expertise.

I just searched Yahoo for "trading systems" and found over 39,000,000 websites in the search.

Very good tip inventor - thanks! One thing that I can mention is that there is a method of back testing optimization that is more valid. That is one where you optimize the variables over a subset of the price data that you have and then once optimized you test the remaining set of data with those variables to see if you can produce the same return. This is a type of artificial (synthetic) forward testing.

You know day trader you probably right but the market do not fallow e set of rules or numbers I have been watching this market for 3 years every day and let me tell you if Joe blow comes out with some news good or bad well! yours or my numbers don't mean squat, besides for a average trader like me when it comes to numbers and formulas it don't mean much, even though I has born in the same place Pythagoras was!!! So in my opinion fined something that is some what working and improve on it with large capital and stomach to back it up it will work for me.

hi max.. i found out about the puretick room here on mypivots. i trade the es based on alex's calls and am scalping along fine. i asked cajun why they prefered to trade the ym and he pointed me to this:

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Q: What do you like about trading the YM?
A: Here are a few reasons why we suggest traders start out by focusing on the Dow E-Mini YM:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM) is the most widely watched index of large-cap US stocks followed by the S&P 500 (ES). It is considered to be a bellwether for the US economy.
• Less slippage. If you get a bad fill on the YM it will only cost you $5/per contract. A bad fill on the ES will cost you $12.50 per contract. This is the equivalent of your broker calling telling you hes charging you an additional $7.50 per market trade.
• Margin requirements are less on the YM
• The ES/ER/AB tend to be overly volatile at times. Sudden ramps that pierce through stops are not uncommon. Newer traders can not handle this action.
• Often times the ES can be used as a leading indicator to foreshadow moves in the YM. We take advantage of this in our trigger system to increase our odds.

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Is this right? But they post their daily "track record" real trades...right?

"I think that I read somewhere that Ninja went bust using the puretick method and doesn't trade anymore."