Goldtent TA Paradise

you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink

1. Karl says:

   June 26, 2016 - 9:10 pm at 9:10 pm

   And as your illustration perhaps implies other horse-like animals reputedly can be even more stubborn than horses, though also reputedly more intelligent.

   I may be just causing trouble here since I am merely spectator, maybe just a troublemaker–and someone who has a very hard time identifying patterns and doesn’t even bother trying usually. But–

   Would it be possible to set up a prospective study? Set up some rules. What constitutes a H/S pattern? Make a precise definition, one that a computer program could use to identify all your patterns and exclude all cases that aren’t. In fact, can you automate your definition so that a trade (or pretend-trade) automatically kicks in? Make it so that different people with opposing opinions might agree that it would be a good test that you’re proposing with your automated trades (or mock trades). It doesn’t have to be everyone’s definition of H/S. But it might work if you were to define H/S in a set way and everyone were to agree that the particular definition was a reasonable one and a reasonable one to test. Have them agree on the market or markets, time frames, number of incidents, definitions of success, and so forth. Make them agree ahead of time about the reasonableness of the test so there’s less ease of 2nd guessing and complaining afterwards. If you want to include the coexistence of this or that other condition, fine.

   Make it really refined so that it takes into account slippage in a pre-defined way, one that everyone agrees with; also something that contends with limitations of market hours. (It’s important to get people to agree ahead of time or else they’ll complain afterwards. Make them take partial possession of the experimental protocol, so to speak.)

   It gets to be a pain since you have to look into statistics and statistical power if you’re being really rigorous (I know enough to throw around the phrase ‘statistical power’ but never learned how to do it myself.)

   The results could not be generalized to that particular market at all times necessarily, or to all markets. Nevertheless it could be sound evidence, better than a lot of stuff that’s published in academics, though not much fun probably.

   All easy for me to write. A pain to carry out, creating a protocol with a definition of a pattern that a computer would automatically follow. I’m not doing it.

   The opposite way, of using your own personal eyeball pattern recognition and ignoring skeptics, trading on your own, if it works for you, works for you, but that can be it’s own reward, your own personal reward.

   (On a different tangent: my own suspicion is that if people have worked out patterns or combinations of patterns and conditions with extremely high rates of success they maybe are keeping their methodologies secret, or are disguising some of their details or otherwise misleading people.)