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Hi RDK91
What does your name stand for??
Sounds like a bottle of wine
How do you know there is no Holy Grail ?
If you send $1 million to a charity of my choice , I will disclose the Holy Grail
regards
bobc
Of course i am not sure there is no one with a "holy grail" out there, however i am doubtful.
I would see a trading system as a holy grail if i can trade and repeat it indefinitely without making errors.
That is exactly the part where the issues is: no errors. Both humans and machines (algo's) will make errors every now and then, humans many many more than machines.
One thing i do know for sure, if there would be such a thing as a holy grail, no one would be selling/teaching it.
A while back I listened to a series of podcasts called chatwithtraders.com
In one of the first interviews the host was interviewing a fellow from South Africa.
"Of course, don't ask me about my secret sauce. I won't tell you."
I was thinking - well duh, of course not.
There was a brief silent pause where you could sense the host was put off by the reply.
(Clearly the host was new to trading to take umbrage at such an obvious statement.)
------another example -------
reputedly the most successful algorithmic hedge fund of all time, Renaissance Technologies, head, Jim Simmons, said "I can't tell you about our methods they are even more secret than my work at the CIA" (where he was a top secret code-breaker for the US govt)
Let me rephrase your question:
"If you knew of a way to generate $100 billion in 30 years and you knew that by sharing it, it would become worthless to both you and others after a very short period, would you blab about and ruin the fortunes of all those who worked over the years to build it?"
Answer: Yes if you were a blankey-blank idiot, but then if you were that stupid you probably wouldn't have been able to built it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies
Medallion, the main fund which is closed to outside investors, has earned over $100 billion in trading profits since its inception in 1988. This translates to a 66.1% gross return or a 39.1% average net return between 1988 - 2018.[28]
Hi Tiger,
Hows your golf?
What is the Holy Grail of getting to heaven?
Quick answer......... doing good.
Who knows this?
Everybody
And its still the Holy Grail
regards
bobc
Yeah, I can share some info, most of what I like is stuff everyone has heard of, although with some more important details. IDK if I should post in this topic, because it's off-topic I guess. So, maybe I should start a new topic asking what everyones' favorite techniques are? If you want to start a new topic about this first, I'll post in there.
I spent alot of time researching how to trade, so I wouldn't mind helping others save alot of time & aggravation like I had to go through. Because life is pretty short! I found VERY little helpful into on the internet, SOME yes, but most of what I found is substandard at best.
I would be happy to share my improved public indicators code too, but I don't really like them myself so I wouldn't recommend people use them LOL. However I am thinking about writing an article about what I think about some public indicators, and I'll try to explain how they work in the article, and why not to use the bad ones, and how best to use the okay ones if one wished to do so. I haven't had time to do this yet, but hopefully I'll get around to this someday soonish.
Hi RDK91
You are correct and your definition of the Holy Grail is good
Anyone else selling Holy Grails should make sure they meet RDK91''s requirement
bobc
I have scanned through most of the replies to this thread and there are some replies I agree with and others I don’t.
Let me briefly add my perspective. I am going to be cryptic on purpose as there is no way I would divulge my holy grail - ever. But I will try and assist in changing your thinking so you might be able to reach the (your?) holy grail.
First off, yes there absolutely is a holy grail in trading, however the holy grail consists of a number of components and these all need to fit together and work seemlessly. There are 3 parts that make up the holy grail - a system or methodology, mental fortitude and adequate capitalization for whatever your system or methodology requires. Some more detail regarding these is important.
1) The system/methodology
My opinion of a holy grail system is one that can be traded either as a scalping system or swing system, can be traded in any market and can be traded on any time frame or price frame. Will you find this type of system being offered by any guru, vendor or anyone else who peddles systems? The simple answer is NO. Does something like this exist - YES. Would anyone who has a system like this sell it or share it..NEVER. If you want a system such as this, you need to develop it yourself. If you think you can use any of the canned indicators that come with every trading platform, you’re wrong. You have to think outside the box, at techniques that exist in other vocations and nature, and adapt those to trading. I will give you some small hints of how I, after 15 years of being a failed but extremely determined trader (I’m a dogmatic Taurus and the word failure does not exist in my vocabulary) changed my way of thinking and thought about doing things differently.
If we think about markets, they usually exist in primarily 2 states - a relaxed laidback state and a psychotic state. The relaxed state is when the market is just trading backwards and forwards, no emotional hype driving it. The psychotic state is usually around news events or after something that has resulted in the market behaving like an unbroken stallion, bucking and heaving all over the place until eventually the stallion realizes he’s not winning the dual and starts behaving
“normally“. The normal in the market, after the psychotic episode is when a trend is underway and becomes quite predictable. Usually the psychotic episode kicks the market into a trend.
So in order to find a system or methodology that works in all these conditions, you have to account for its personality first. My suggestion is look at 3 concepts from physics or nature - velocity, acceleration and adaptability. You should try and code indicators that encompass these qualities and will allow you to identify what state the market is in. When the market is relaxed, the velocity and acceleration will be low (acceleration is actually zero at this time) but when it becomes psychotic, the velocity and acceleration pick up and you can trade the change accordingly. When the market is accelerating, you should be trading that side of the market until the velocity and acceleration tell you it’s changing.
Now onto adaptability. Adaptability aspect should tell you in which direction you should be trading, and whether you are in a strong trend ( which your velocity/accelerator indicator/s will confirm) When the market is relaxed, you need your indicator to reflect that, but when the market becomes rowdy and eventually hits a trend, the indicator needs to rapidly adapt to these changes. There are a multitude of adaptive indicators on the market - find the one/s that will give you this information, do some small modifications to make it your own, and you will have something that will never break and will be tradeable anywhere and everywhere!
2) After finding your edge with the correct tool you have developed, they mean nothing unless you have psychological fortitude and are able to control your mind. This is THE most important aspect of anything related to trading as it is your emotions against the worlds emotions. All markets are simply the worlds emotions on display and at play. As with anything in life, HUMANS DO NOT FUNCTION WELL UNDER STRESS (not shouting I really want this point to sink in as the 95% of all traders never appreciate this point and how important it is and continue to lose). I can tell you my 15 years of failure in trading wrought some significant psychological damage, just like it does to every single trader on the planet, but you have to realize that if you do not get control of this, you will not only never reach your holy grail, but you will forever be a failing/failed trader. Mark Douglas, The Disciplined Trader is a phenomenal book to get on the right path to overcoming psychological damage/hangups. The way I found works best for me now is to algorithmic trade, where I do not have to make any decisions in the heat of battle, I simply let the methodology/system do it’s thing. Even today, I sometimes feel I want to do some discretionary trading and even though I know all the pitfalls, I still get swept away sometimes and do stupid, head smacking things that when the trade is closed, I till say to myself, ”I cannot believe you fell for that”. For example, you have your order waiting to be executed, the market gets close to your order and then suddenly darts quickly away. You think, oh no, its not coming back here so you start chasing it to either get into or out of a position, and when executed, see the market a while later go exactly back to where your original order was sitting. When I’m algorithmic trading, none of this ever occurs as I’m not making decisions based on emotion. Emotions are one of the most important qualities we have as humans and you need to be 100 percent in control of them in the market, not 80 or 90 %, the full 100 %, and if you cannot, then trade algorithmically.
3) Adequate capitalization - This is a very simple point - told by many traders, often. If you are trading on the sniff of an oil rag, you have no chance of making it and it is from this, that most of the psychological damage occurs. You are too scared to lose money and so you trade like a dick. You don‘t have rational stops, you use a simple money stop. You do not take into account leverage adequately so trade out of your comfort zone. There is a load that one could discuss regarding this but this was supposed to be a brief post but seems to have become really extended. Bottom line is if you do not have an adequately funded account, don’t trade until you are able to get more cash together, or today one can actually trade micro contracts. Trade these micros, they can certainly help. Losing $50 in a trade rather than $500, in a small account is in itself, huge!
Hope some of these hit home and make you rethink various aspects of trading. But I am certainly, strongly on side for the existance of the holy grail.
