Traders' Roundtable

One thing you can do is ask others for their opinion about your opinion. Another thing you can do is formulate a hypothesis, design an experiment to test your hypothesis, perform the experiment, analyse the resulting experimental data, and draw a conclusion. [.....blah blah, roll eyes, blah.......]...

MCT - no, not at all. We are not all successful trend followers. I am not sure how you reached that conclusion from what I said. My point was nothing more than this: a trend follower is someone who makes money as a trend follower and no amount of definition is going to change that fact. Please donâ€...

A trend follower is someone who,　by trading trends, makes enough money to continue trading. Without this certain level of profit, everything else is meaningless. A blunter version: A trend follower is any person that makes money following trends. Without this profit you are not a trend follower, irr...

Needless top say my above poll has some formatting issues that I cant fix now that it is posted. Dan/c.f..... could you delete the additional "yes" and "no" options.

This is a potentially pointless exercise in understanding the interaction or lack there of between the following: - traders’ risk inclination, - leverage in futures trading, - synthetic physical positions. Consider the following on a generic long term trend following system, just like aberration f...

I could have told you, myself, anybody, that on a daily basis my character is not suited to trend following at all (according to the boundaries in this article). Strange thing is that I have had no problems at all trading in a trend following manner over the last 8 years or so, including mechanical,...

I forgot to mention something that I had learnt: Trading single contracts in most markets as your max allowable size means that your account is big enough to start trading but not big enough to allow you to manage drawdowns with any meaningful granularity in position sizing. This may be all well and...

JK, good to see you are keeping me honest ;) I trade a blend of systems that in sum are ‘the system’. The component (sub-system) that I refer to as being in deep drawdown is a more generic trend follower, like Aberration. The system component that you mention in your post is currently producing a fl...

A month or so ago I implemented my plan for dealing with a DD that is deeper than a certain threshold. One pillar of the plan requires a pause in some of my live trading with paper trading as a substitute. I have been a little disappointed with my emotions in this period of semi-cessation. A good ev...

I would always try and use Reuters as my data source for FX prices given that they provide the platform for a large % of interbank screen trading. I have never priced them, I assume that they are expensive. There is no central FX exchange so I would try and get as close to the next best thing, which...

I bought it about 4 years ago but didn’t get past the second book. Overall it appears most useful for discretionary traders. A mechanical trader isn’t really a decision making trader acting under pressure, rather we are just people that need to live through equity draw downs, not on its own an easy ...

It is worth having a look at the behavior of the stop loss in hopeful counter trend trades that turn into losers due to a breakout (rather than reversal) and the trend continuing against the counter trend trade direction.

Bagherra, I think having an MBA from a good school helps you get into hedge funds or proprietary trading and also helps you to raise funds for your own hedge fund. I can't comment on hedge fund entry or fund raising, but I certainly have not met many bank PT's that have MBA's.... many didn't even g...

The Turtle system's brilliance was its simplicity and it worked out ok. :) Hi William, I actually don't think the turtle rules are all that simple. They are not complex relative to some concepts of science which are utilised in trading systems (DSP and what have you). Entry and exit in basic form a...

The 21st century is the century of Mr Mediocre, and that is a huge success! shhhhh! I am quite comfortable thank you. Please don't bring attention to what I thought was my little secret. http://enderzero.net/forum/images/smiles/ninja.gif If I stay quite, I may get away with it a little longer. vere...

I worked with a 10 man prop team that made about 1 billion dollars in 1993 Hi, pls take this is the good natured fun that it is intented. Lets assume each member of the desk was of equal importance: $1bio / 10 men = 100mio PnL per man. Lets say the bank pays a then market 10% of before tax trading ...

To nobody and everybody: I am not at all answering the question of this thread, but the below is related to the topic of portfolio heat from an open equity perspective in particular. Open risk to paper PnL becomes an issue after fast moves in the direction of the trade. Steady trends (perhaps recent...

RBP, Chuck_B has certainly given a great response and I do not at all want to detract from it. Having said that I will add an extra thought or two: 1. stop hating yourself, 2. allow yourself a little perverted joy for having experienced first hand just how powerful hope/fear can be, without having t...

I tried once or twice to play poker. Failed. Never could get the hang of it, or perhaps I could and just didn't gather any interest in it. I will never know. As it stands today, I can't play poker. I can't even pretend to know how to play. I am that bad. Perhaps that is why I sometimes have a draw d...

How do I handle a huge draw down? More to the point, I do I define a huge draw down. I will swap mine for your 15%.

I am actually spending my time in DD exploring how it is influencing me as human operating a trading system.