Traders' Roundtable

Sluggo, I got a good chuckle out of that one. I’ve seen it too; there are those who are not satisfied until they’ve got a redwoods tree supply of unfocused (in many cases irrelevant and meaningless) paper and data. Then, if they are finally able to make a decision (usually not) they find that th...

Recently I have noticed very minor aspects of discretion creeping into my trading perspective. As a one time “dyed in the woolâ€

I suppose it depends a lot on whether you believe that a commodities historical profitability is important in whether or not you will trade it today.. Personally I don’t care too much (although I don’t completely discount it, I avoid the S&P in trend following for certain reasons). I have no...

The volume at the LME dwarfs many US markets. You’ll have absolutely no problem trading on the LME (if you know how to do it.) Use a broker that understands it well and is willing to place the overnight orders and reward yourself with this great diversification opportunity. My only complaint with ...

I’ve done quite a bit of research recently on the concept of dynamic portfolio selection. Typically, a portfolio is decided ahead of time and is therefore static. Signals are generated for those various markets and there is either a trade or there isn’t. There are lots of potential pitfalls with...

A good friend of mine (and best man at my wedding) Kevin Matras offers a very powerful software package called "Research Wizard" from Zacks Investment Research. The sweet spot of the platform is based on the Zacks Rank which is Zacks claim to fame and has produced some impressive results w...

Not sure what the most current status is, the best bet is talking to Bob Spear himself. Or check out sister product Trading Recipes at www.tradingrecipes.com

Dean Hoffman
www.traderstech.net

This post is pretty elementary for most forum members. However, new traders may have an interest. Somebody asked me to generate a report in Mechanica simply using a 20 day high/low entry with a 10 day high/low exit and a 3 * 15 ATR position sizing method. (Yes I know its not the turtle system). Mech...

I think a good exercise for a VT owner who is curious about this would be to test a portfolio of say 25 markets over the following periods. 1975-1985 then 1985-1995 and then 1995-2005 Obviously try to choose markets that traded during all periods for an apples-to apples comparison. Compare the vario...

Chris,

FM LABS has C++ modules for what you’re trying to do. Their data handling module is excellent.

http://www.fmlabs.com/toolkit.htm

Dean Hoffman
www.hoffmantrading.com

Bob Spear (of Trading Recipes) emailed me his thoughts on the subject and said I could post. "Dean I don't pay a lot of attention to ending equity. I Do, however, pay a lot of attention to compound annual return info. That number is not influenced by equity level. Similarly, I don't pay attenti...

Forum Mgmnt,

I’m curious to know if you have given thought to the reporting issues I mentioned above. How might you suggest they be dealt with during a Veri-Trader simulation?

Regards,
Dean Hoffman

When running simulations including compounding the results can become extreme (ending equity in the billions etc.). One possible solution to this is to simply reset the equity back to the initial amount each year. However, this creates its own problems. For example, assume a 100k investor only riski...

A lot of the ideas in Tobys book are avilable for $27 at:

http://store.traders.com/tocroprabrpa.html

You realize pretty quick that this stuff isnt instant gold. You need to do A LOT of work with it.

Happy reading!

Dean Hoffman
www.traderstech.net

However, since margin is typically a function of volatility (risk) then the argument could be made that two systems with identical performances still have underlying differences in potential risk if one was using more margin on average to achieve the same return. Basically you could say that the one...