Nice trading quote

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Iron
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'Contrarianism isn't an approach that will make you money all of the time. Much of the time there aren't great market excesses to bet against.'
Curiously, the same can also be said of trend following, at least in the financial markets. I think people often don't realise that big market movements are only knowable with hindsight, and that the direction and duration of such movements is unpredictable...

Jeff
Iron
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'If markets are rational, as the efficient-market hypothesis assumed, then they will allocate capital to its most productive uses. But the momentum effect suggests that an irrationality might be at work; investors could be buying shares (and commodities) just because they have risen in price.

That would help explain why bubbles are created and why professional investors ended up allocating capital to dotcom companies with no earnings and business plans written on the back of a cigarette packet. Momentum can carry whole economies off track.'

The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/17848665/print)
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Euler
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“We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perception of random events. We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control, namely to randomness. We feel responsible for the good stuff, but not for the bad. This causes us to think that we are better than others at whatever we do for a living.”

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan
sprinter
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Wow.

I just read the Charles Munger link from Ferru. Very interesting read.

This is one of my favorites:

"So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people
have the aptitudes and you don't, you're going to lose. And that's as close to certain as any
prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you've got an edge. And you've
got to play within your own circle of competence."

Thanks for the link!
sprinter
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And another one, for Zenyatta perhaps....

"And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big
when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple"
Iron
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"Anyone with average intelligence can learn to trade. This is not rocket science."
William Eckhardt
Zenyatta
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sprinter wrote:And another one, for Zenyatta perhaps....

"And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big
when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple"
Today I believe the opportunity has presented itself. Today, I will try to seize the moment and get the big 1-2 KO punch!

Punch 1 - 3.00 Haydock 'Sole Power', 100 ticks, reinvest and
Punch 2 - 3.15 Curragh 'Power', 100 ticks

'Opportunities multiply as they are siezed!'
-Sun Tzu
Iron
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Zenyatta wrote: Punch 1 - 3.00 Haydock 'Sole Power', 100 ticks,
Hmmm...

Sole Power doesn't look like it's going to be a big mover IMHO... :)

Jeff
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Iron
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“In statistical terms, I figure I have traded about 2 million contracts…with an average profit of $70 per contract. This average profit is approximately 700 standard deviations away from
randomness, a departure that that would occur by chance alone about as frequently as the spare parts in an automotive salvage lot might spontaneously assemble themselves into a McDonald’s restaurant.”

Victor Niederhoffer
The Education of a Speculator (1997)

"Despite his envy and admiration, [Nassim Taleb] did not want to be Victor Niederhoffer -- not then, not now, and not even for a moment in between. For when he looked around him, at the books and the tennis court and the folk art on the walls -- when he contemplated the countless millions that Niederhoffer had made over the years -- he could not escape the thought that it might all have been the result of sheer, dumb luck."
Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm)
Hashir1234
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Trading provides one of the last great frontiers of opportunity in our economy. It is one of the very few ways in which an individual can start with a relatively small bankroll and actually become a multimillionaire.”
Fully Automated Stock Trading Videos
Iron
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Zenyatta wrote: Punch 2 - 3.15 Curragh 'Power', 100 ticks
Not quite 100 ticks, but it drifted from about 5.0 to 7.4, so good call! :)

Jeff
Zenyatta
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Jeff, the 100-tick bets I placed were set to keep in-play (they were back-to-lay in-play bets) - 'Power' won the race.
Iron
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"Playing the races appears to be the one business in which men believe they can succeed without special study, special talent, or special exertion."
Pittsburgh Phil
Zenyatta
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"The single, most important, requirement for trading profitably is information. If someone has better information than you, you're gambling without an edge, and in the long-term will lose" - Cassini, 'Green All Over'
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Euler
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“Plans fail because of what we have called tunneling, the neglect of sources of uncertainty outside the plan itself…..The unexpected almost always pushes in a single direction: higher costs and a longer time to completion. On very rare occasions, as with the Empire State Building, you get the opposite: shorter completion and lower costs—these occasions are becoming truly exceptional nowadays…..As I said earlier, we are too narrow-minded a species to consider the possibility of events straying from our mental projections, but furthermore, we are too focused on matters internal to the project to take into account external uncertainty, the “unknown unknown,” so to speak, the contents of the unread books.” –Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan
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