Turning Points

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever figured out a truly accurate way to decipher future turning points. As far as I know, it has never been done. I don't believe that it will ever be done.

I have encountered traders who have told me that so-and-so does it, but I have never seen the proof. Nevertheless, I’m willing to listen. I used to live in the Ozark mountains of the “show-me” State of Missouri, so show me!

When it comes to the future, I believe that man has no absolutes. The best he can do is to determine statistically the probabilities of the occurrence of an event. But statistics are not sufficiently exact for trading without a complimentary management system that takes into account the aberrations that are bound to occur.

Here are a few aberrations: What do you do about flood, drought, pest invasions, earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, tornados, volcanic eruptions, revolutions, and other phenomenon that all can push prices and market action to the extreme limits of the bell curve? What do you do when farmers decide to hold back their crops, or ranchers decide to hold over their livestock for higher prices? What do you do when a Central Bank suddenly raises or lowers interest rates by an amount never seen before? What do you do when an economic report comes out unexpectedly high or low?

That's where management comes into play. However, even the best management cannot compensate for bad fills caused by crooked players, slow turnaround, bad data, fast market conditions, illiquidity, electronic failures, system failures, poor back office accounting, or a bunch of crazies flying airplanes into the former World Trade Center.

As long as you chase the idea of perfecting your trading along the lines of predicting what will happen, you are consigning yourself to failure. The best you can do is to manage your trading along the lines of what is likely to happen, and then make your best effort from there, using your human brain and your human intuition. Those are really all we have to work with.

Is this a statement? or did I missed the point?

~~~mike

I think what Joe is saying is don't try and predict but play the probabilities. i.e. don't try and predict if red or white will come up on the roulette wheel but play the probability of winning in the long run - which with the roulette wheel is to buy the stock of the casino and be the house. In trading we can't predict the turn so play the setups that give you the highest probability for winning in the long run.

Thanks for clearing this out day trading..

Day Trading: I use your pivoits and val/poc areas. They are very good.
Do you use the bell curve to arrive @ these levels?
Thanks
Ben

redsixspeed: The pivots use standard pivot formulae. On the Daily Notes page just click on the name of the pivot calculation and it will take you to a page that shows the formula. The VAH/VAL/POC use the bell curve. The POC is in the middle and the VAH/VAL are 1 standard deviation each way.