Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse models of reality with reality itself. ... individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality.This is a very eloquent depiction of the reason why I stopped forecasting index trends.
Forecasting of market trends is a bad approach any way you slice it. It makes one to have an opinion, a bias, that has to be expressed in terms of long or short position. Every next bar brings new information, supporting prediction or not, until some time in a future trader can look back and realize whether his forecast was right or wrong originally. I've been working this way for years, and this is the best explanation why my index trades have never been a steady source of profits. Quite the opposite.
This tuition, paid to "S&P500 Futures University", was not wasted (hopefully) and resulted in System11 - a simple and robust approach to short term index trading. On the other extreme end is System1 - a long term stock/bond index system, that never had a losing year, but also sidestepped most of 2013. System1 was designed in a way to avoid major bear market (and it did), but relies heavily on my own opinion and vague concept of "Enough", which needs to be discarded. I am in a process of modifying System1 rules. It will take awhile, as long term system testing takes a long time (no shit).
Financial speculation is a process of making an aggressive monetary bet, based on incomplete information, for uncertain period of time. The Technical Analysis of price chart can't tell the future. It could tell where we have been, where we are now, and what may happen next (based on interpretation of conditional probability). Never 100%, not even close. 50/50 is the best I can wish for, yet it still requires forecasting, albeit to a lesser degree. A "SET-UP" is what investment community came up with, to fool themselves into thinking that they don't have a bias. A certain quantifiable set of conditions, that lead to recognizable outcome most of the time. Isn't this an 'opinion' again? What is it based upon? Squiggly-wiggly lines on price/time plot of some financial scam?
Give me a fucking break...
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"The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios. The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market." [Soros]
http://socialleverage50.com/2013/09/22/stanley-druckenmiller-greatest-moneymaking-machine-history/
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Shopping list:
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Positions:
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/candleglance.html?HEMP,PHOT,MJNA,MDBX,AG,CEF,FNV,GDX,PPP,RGLD,SLV,SPPP|B|P5,3,3
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http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/candleglance.html?AMLP,XLU,FIUIX,LYSDY,NIB,BAL,TAN,SCTY,ccj|B|P5,3,3
UPDATE 2/14/2014
As soon as finished taking stops on many common stocks, I saw many new set-ups. With broad rally accommodating, I am now 70%+ invested and want more on some kind of reaction.
1800SPX has to hold for few days. then we will see...
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As i was writing this musing, I realized that there is a philosophical problem with what I do, and got stuck. So I published it at Molecool's site, hoping that some replies will get me 'unstuck'. Below are some excerpts of discussion we had here: http://evilspeculator.com/?p=40387#disqus_thread








You know, I always keep away from "catching falling knives". Now I look at this industry and asking myself: Could this be a finest example of value investing?
And later on Monday:
This collapse last week sure has all ingredients of capitulation.
I'm not saying it's THE bottom, but....fighting a strong desire to buy some miners down here.
Darth Gerb on GDX:
long term - no go, until..
I want to see a 50% retrace down to $33, later this year.
no one wants to own a hole in the ground.
My reply:
"no one wants it" - is exactly my point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwbXWwTHKtQ