Jump to content

Commander T's Diary


Recommended Posts

Very good, sir!

 

I am familiar with both Weinstein and Livermore - their methods are (in hindsight) simple yet so powerful.

 

One thing that I have learnt about myself is that I am too quick to try to catch turn points, and re-studying guys like Weinstein, Livermore & Sekota make you realise that it is preferable to wait for the market to confirm your hypothesis. Even if the price has already moved 5-10%, there is plenty of time to initiate a position near the start of what you hope will develop into a long trend, and then to increase position size as you observe the trend moving in your favour.

 

If you have honed your trading to the point where you think you could successfully make money on a consistent basis (real money, not paper trades), would you still prefer to work for someone else? I find it strange that anyone would want to work for others rather than trade their own account.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 671
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Basically constructing a mechanical system is a bit like playing with Lego construction bricks, Select the components that fit your personality so that you will follow the algorithm precisely.

 

comp.PNG

^You could take a path from left to right, and construct a system, and it will probably work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very good, sir!

 

I am familiar with both Weinstein and Livermore - their methods are (in hindsight) simple yet so powerful.

 

One thing that I have learnt about myself is that I am too quick to try to catch turn points, and re-studying guys like Weinstein, Livermore & Sekota make you realise that it is preferable to wait for the market to confirm your hypothesis. Even if the price has already moved 5-10%, there is plenty of time to initiate a position near the start of what you hope will develop into a long trend, and then to increase position size as you observe the trend moving in your favour.

 

If you have honed your trading to the point where you think you could successfully make money on a consistent basis (real money, not paper trades), would you still prefer to work for someone else? I find it strange that anyone would want to work for others rather than trade their own account.

 

 

The big plan is to get the personal account into a critical mass so it can spin off passive income (either through dividends or through trading) I am some way off it - the mortgage has to be paid off first, and then enough has to come in to pay monthly expenses. No trader in the world can get this goal in lets say 5 years (assume the market will be largely flat) unless they have access to cheap credit and no risk aversion - or trade others people's money and take 1% fee off a $1billion fund failure or success!

 

If you want to borrow £25,000 on an unsecured loan to speculate, the interest rate is like 8-10% APR. My credit score isn't great because I don't like borrowing money in general so I can't access the sub 6% rates. I don't know if I could beat 10% a year consistently yet either. I can look at it as practicing for the day when a mania comes. Reading around, stock brokers can earn somewhere around £100K they retire early and they are never short of a few bob! I wouldn't mind working for someone else if that incentive was there. Maybe when there is a huge stock boom, new opportunities will arise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dug this out from the depths of my chart folder. This website has removed this price chart as a selectable option now - I wonder why (?!)

 

gold.jpg

^This chart is from a website that rhymes with Bimbomine.com

 

Venezuela currency. I take gold is still banned there - but could you trade it on your computer? Who takes the other side of the trade? Who wants the Venezuelan currency? How would that work? What are gold juniors doing there? Are there any gold juniors? Who knows. You could raise your stop at every 1,000 intervals. But don't forget that chart has been divided by 1000. So in actual fact, raise your stop at every 1,000,000 intervals.

 

One ounce of gold is 6,000,000 VEB in September 2010. Maybe the VEB is dead now and you couldn't cash out if you tried - remember the two way bet 50% cash out plan earlier I said about..... in the story I wrote here http://www.greenener...220#entry279853

 

----

 

Edit - according to WIKI the VEB (bolívares) is dead, and the VEF (bolívares fuertes) replaces it! They give you one VEF for every 1000 VEB. Nice. Long live the new fiat! :o Well there you go, maybe that is the future for the dollar.

http://en.wikipedia....zuelan_bolívar

 

According to http://www.goldrate2...rica/venezuela/ One Gold Ounce is 8,409 VEF.

 

In old money that is 8,409,000 VEB - wow. How many people on this planet have bothered to do this calculation?

Raise your stop to a figure under 8,000,000 perhaps!

 

 

---

 

Ed Seykota writes (as we like him on this thread) ; "Inflation is part of the way societies sweep away the old order. All currencies eventually get debased -- like it or not. Compute one penny invested at the time of Christ, compounded at 3 percent per year. Then consider why nobody has anywhere that amount these days."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you want to borrow £25,000 on an unsecured loan to speculate, the interest rate is like 8-10% APR. My credit score isn't great because I don't like borrowing money in general so I can't access the sub 6% rates. I don't know if I could beat 10% a year consistently yet either. I can look at it as practicing for the day when a mania comes. Reading around, stock brokers can earn somewhere around £100K they retire early and they are never short of a few bob! I wouldn't mind working for someone else if that incentive was there. Maybe when there is a huge stock boom, new opportunities will arise.

 

I completely know what you mean - only risk what you are willing to lose. I mainly trade on margin; a couple of thousand in a spreadbetting account is easily enough to get you £20k-£30k exposure depending on what markets you are trading.

 

Of course, all the standard health warnings apply when trading on margin - and I have blown up my account more than once.... that was always because I was undisciplined and broke my own trading rules... and I am learning and improving all the time.

 

Funny psychological issues arise when on margin that makes people kill themselves doubling down on bad bets - but in theory the prices do exactly what the underlying does, and the results should be the same if you approach it in the same way as if you were unleveraged.

 

Thanks for the pm, too ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spread bets I couldn't make them work well - it is too tempting to use too much leverage after a losing trade, I am edging my way back into it after a 4 year break from it, but starting very small, and ideally limiting to shorting because of the cost of holding a "in the money" trade*. One has to realize if their system has an edge, it needs to survive 100, 500, 1000 trades to see consistent profits. Capital Spreads offer a demonstration account will unlimited £10,000 top ups if any one wants to practice trading Forex, commodities and indices - but no more individual shares. CockneyRebel a very successful trader on ADVFN says he doesn't use spread bets largely so there must a very, very, small amount of people out there that can consistently make money from spread betting - where are these people? I have not come across a spread-bet-star-trader yet.

 

*There are some things that are additional psychological burdens in spread betting-

 

- The daily roll over cost - if your trade is in profit, there is an overnight charge each night (just over libor rate I think), which makes you want break your trade plan and take your profit quickly. This is a losing strategy because you need big wins to make up for the small losing trades.

 

- If you opt for a 3 month or 6 month contract rather than rolling contract, you have added pressure that the trade needs to hit your price target quickly before the contract runs out, or you face a charge on rolling that over. Again if you don't follow your trade plan, you might tend to cut your winners quick, and let your losers run.

 

- Price action moves quicker going down, rather than up. So shorting in theory would be suited to spread betting, reducing the costs of waiting the trade to play out. "The bull climbs the stairs, and the bear jumps out of the window".

 

Owing the actual shares takes out that added time pressure of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spread bets I couldn't make them work well - it is too tempting to use too much leverage after a losing trade, I am edging my way back into it after a 4 year break from it, but starting very small, and ideally limiting to shorting because of the cost of holding a "in the money" trade*. One has to realize if their system has an edge, it needs to survive 100, 500, 1000 trades to see consistent profits. Capital Spreads offer a demonstration account will unlimited £10,000 top ups if any one wants to practice trading Forex, commodities and indices - but no more individual shares. CockneyRebel a very successful trader on ADVFN says he doesn't use spread bets largely so there must a very, very, small amount of people out there that can consistently make money from spread betting - where are these people? I have not come across a spread-bet-star-trader yet.

 

*There are some things that are additional psychological burdens in spread betting-

 

- The daily roll over cost - if your trade is in profit, there is an overnight charge each night (just over libor rate I think), which makes you want break your trade plan and take your profit quickly. This is a losing strategy because you need big wins to make up for the small losing trades.

 

- If you opt for a 3 month or 6 month contract rather than rolling contract, you have added pressure that the trade needs to hit your price target quickly before the contract runs out, or you face a charge on rolling that over. Again if you don't follow your trade plan, you might tend to cut your winners quick, and let your losers run.

 

- Price action moves quicker going down, rather than up. So shorting in theory would be suited to spread betting, reducing the costs of waiting the trade to play out. "The bull climbs the stairs, and the bear jumps out of the window".

 

Owing the actual shares takes out that added time pressure of course.

 

The spread costs are miniscule, eg 1 pt on the daily FTSE, 1pt on Gold. It's much more efficient than the standard £10 per trade dealing in real shares, unless you are dealing in very large quantities.

It's a non-issue for me.

 

But you are right - there is a very real additional psychological burden of trading on margin that can crimp otherwise successful practitioners. Trading is a highly non-intuitive practice, and leverage tends to accentuate the pressures that lead to bad decision-making.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hot money is coming into speculative shares, the like I have not witnessed since 2004 in the AIM shares. Examples are LSE:PHE which increased by 6x and LSE:ATUK nearly doubling.

I don't know if I am seeing something new here. Organised campaigns to pump up stock on a sophisticated scale. The one doing the rounds is LSE:OXS. I don't know if anything will come of it so tread carefully or if the leaked rumors are true- closed yesterday at 1.375p.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thomson directors has gone into administration - a bit like the Yellow Pages shares being suspended, what next for them?!

 

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/08/14/thomson-directories-placed-administration

 

This could be a great shorting strategy as the internet carves up the old order.

 

Weight Watchers short would now be "in the money" from $ 37, now $36.03.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another super speculator is Bernard Baruch http://en.wikipedia..../Bernard_Baruch

 

Some similarities to Jesse Livermore.

 

220px-Bernard_Baruch_cph.3b33468.jpg

 

Baruch became a broker and then a partner in A.A. Housman & Company. With his earnings and commissions, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $18,000 ($434,000 in today's dollars). There he amassed a fortune before the age of 30 via speculation in the sugar market. By 1903 Baruch had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of "The Lone Wolf of Wall Street" because of his refusal to join any financial house. By 1910, he had become one of Wall Street's best-known financiers.

 

------------------------------

 

What follows, is what I found on the internet, and I am still piecing information together. What follows is gold.

 

I am grateful to Charles Kirk for having taken the trouble of summarizing Baruch’s pertinent words of wisdom – sage advice that we can all do with to guide us to correct investment decisions – reported verbatim in the paragraphs below.

• Baruch started out as most traders do – i.e. losing lots of money because he lacked the knowledge, experience and discipline. “You have to lose money in order to better yourself.”

• Real success in the market takes time and money. Unfortunately “most people view the market as the place where the miracle of great and quick riches can be performed with little effort”.

• Overtrading and holding too many positions in his early years caused Baruch to go broke many times before he developed the discipline to succeed.

• A successful speculator is “a man who observes the future and acts before it occurs”. Acting swiftly in the market is important.

• After losing money as a result of the recommendation of others, Baruch focused on the facts. “One must search through a maze of complex and contradictory details to get to the significant facts … Then he must be able to operate coldly, clearly, and skilfully on the basis of those facts.” The challenge for the successful speculator is “how to disentangle the cold hard facts from the rather warm feelings of the people dealing with the facts.” Moreover, “if you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don’t get all the facts, it can’t be right”. - Price action is a fact! Notanewmember

Be honest with yourself and expect to be wrong as many times as you are right. “If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong.” Cutting losses quickly was THE most important trading rule.

• Don’t underestimate the power of thinking. “During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.”

• If your stocks are keeping you awake a night worrying about them, you should sell them to a “sleeping point”. - I take that as to reduce the size of the position -Notanewmember.

• The way to truly succeed in the market is to devote oneself full-time to the task. “Because of the extreme challenge, one must commit full attention to it.” Market speculation is “no different than trying to be a successful doctor or lawyer … you simply must devote yourself full-time to the study of your craft”.

• Through experience, Baruch learned the golden rule – never take stock tips from others. Self-reliance and “doing one’s own thinking” are a must.

• Baruch found it best to keep silent about his positions and trades and he believed it was “best to trade alone”. When he retired from A.A. Housman & Company and went on his own, Baruch did so because he thought it was best to trade independently and remain focused in order to achieve the greatest profits. “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.”

• According to Baruch, the stock market does not determine the health of the economy but “rather reflects it”. The ability to understand this is an important skill.

• Baruch would often trade both sides of the market – long and short. “Having flexibility should not be underestimated.”

• About risk, he said: There is no investment which does not involve some risk and is not something of a gamble.” Moreover, “what we can try to do perhaps is to come to a better understanding of how to reduce the element of risk in whatever we undertake”.

• Baruch did not believe in diversification, but that it was “better to have a few stocks and to watch them carefully”.

• Having a “good supply of cash on hand at all times in reserve is important” to take advantage of market declines and major crashes.

• He believed that traders should focus on one thing at a time. He thought no one could be an expert at too many things. He liked to focus on “one thing at a time, perfect it, and do it well”.

• Baruch believed the two main mistakes that contributed to his early losses were the same mistakes most investors make, namely 1) “They know too little about the company’s management, earnings, prospects, and possibility for future growth” and 2) “They tend to trade beyond their financial capital capacity”.

• Baruch was a fundamentalist versus technical focused investor. In essence he required strong real assets of the company (cash and properties), that the company produced or performed something that is needed and valued, and that it had good management.

“Successful speculation requires staying on top of changes in industries and companies that either create new industries or improve on existing industries. The majority of your profits will come from these two … The shrewdest traders throughout history all adapted the skill of reactionary change, as the market constantly presents new and different opportunities.”

• What drives stock prices is human reactions. Ironically, the key to successful speculation is to remove our decisions from our emotions. “Without control over your emotions, there is very little chance for profitable success in the stock market.”

• Baruch often described the market as a thermometer and the economic environment as the fever. “The market does not cause economic cycles but merely reflects them and the judgments of what traders believe business and the future will be like.”

• He believed no one could sell at the top and buy at the bottom (both for stocks and the market itself). “Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars.” That said, Baruch said that through all of his time and research, he would develop a “feel” for when it was time to reduce positions. “I made my money by selling too soon.” While he didn’t have sell rules per se, he developed more of a sense that one gets when one trades for many years and follows the market with intense study.

• “It is much harder to sell stocks correctly than to buy them correctly.” Because of the emotional aspect of trading, if a “stock went up, the average investor would hold because he wants more gains – he’s exhibiting greed. If the stock declines, he also holds on and hopes the stock will come back so he can at least sell and break even – he’s hoping against hope”. Baruch worked hard to avoid these emotions by recognizing mistakes early and taking immediate action to own up to his mistakes quickly.

• Baruch believed that you had to take responsibility for your decisions. “Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.” In addition, he blamed most of his losses on the failure of judgment and taking time to think. “Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.”

• It is important to “follow what the market is currently doing as opposed to following what one might personally think the market should do.” As he said, “Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.”

• Knowing your biases and weaknesses is important. “Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see.”

• Baruch was highly regarded and well-respected, but he frequently practised humility and understood the challenges of the market. He is often credited with the saying “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible”.

• Taking time away from the market is necessary. He took many vacations and used the downtime to “reflect on past transactions”. For Baruch, this time away was important so he could have the peace of mind and concentration to reflect and improve his abilities. He devoted lots of hours and effort to examining past trades to find out why he lost money.

Source: Charles Kirk, The Kirk Report, June 5, 2008.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just came across this which may interest trend followers

 

I've been trying to develop a more systematic approach to the markets and have found myself reading a lot of trend following literature recently. For what its worth, I highly recommend 'Building Reliable Trading Systems' by Keith Fitschen as a nice follow up to Andreas Clenow's 'Following the Trend'.

 

Fitschen develops two systems: a shorter term counter-trend system for stocks (he uses the Nasdaq 100 stocks) and a longer term trend-following system for commodities (read: futures) that are tradeable "as is". However, perhaps more interesting and valuable is his account of how he goes about developing and testing trading strategies providing a basis to augment his / develop ones own strategy. He also addresses how to adapt the strategy for limited account sizes (starting w/ 20k) which I found particularly interesting, as these types of systems often rely of heavy diversification that require substantial starting capital.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the recommendation! I think I will ask for it for Christmas - Andreas Clenow's book is very heavy going, and it will take some time to digest.

 

The more I look a round, the more similar pattern I see with trend following traders; They go through these stages;

 

1. Trading or Investing blindly with no rules. One can be stuck at this stage for probably 3 years - or decades, or never get out of here.

 

2. System discovery from reading and wanting to learn and develop (e.g. way of the Turtles book)

 

3. System application, but inconsistent rule following.

 

4. Psychological reprogramming, and Profitability.

 

5. Blog posting, less bulletin board posting on actual stocks (and falling in love with them).

 

6. Blog turns into or becomes part of a website that has a twitter feed, shop with their own ebook, and 1-1 mentoring program. There are Youtube videos, news letters, hardback book publication etc.

 

[i am probably between 4 and 5. I am unlikely to want to go to stage 6 though]

 

----

 

I can count probably 10 "businesses" that do this. Some I have mentioned in this diary.

 

Why do they need to sell a system if it can make money? Why would they tell you how, when they can keep it for themselves?

 

Basically, there is no limit to greed and the desire for more. Sure if the system is profitable, there is the time element, and risk element. You have to wait for the trades to play out and have risk.

 

Selling information, the money is in the pocket straight away, and the risk is minimized - there is a lot of upside, much more than 30% return! If it costs next to nothing to produce an ebook, that is an infinite return! Additionally some people sell part of their system (you can start from £20 and go all the way up to £2000) or all of their system - you don't know what you are getting. It pays to read around, and devise your own system I certainly believe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stories from the Great Depression in Greece

 

https://witness.theg...4b0b43b7713d895

 

There are 13 so far, here is an example

 

third world

 

 

I come from a middle class Greek Athenian family (and like using vague statistics to illustrate my points). I've lived in the UK for over 10 years now and it saddens me to say I do not plan to go back and live in Greece, because there is no way I could survive. Back at home, there is no prospect.

My parents, both civil servants (a University Professor and a Secondary School Classics Teacher), have had a total of 55 per cent cuts in their wage - each. No longer able to afford their rented flat and bills and my mother facing prison threats from banks for debt she thought she could repay when she signed up for, before the cuts- they had to move to the ghetto by the central train station, to stay at my grandma's family home rent-free. This would not have been an issue, had this not been the red-light district, where the miseries of being poor are unavoidable. No heating, no sunlight, no space for my sis and I to sleep when we visit. They are pushing on 60 and yet still facing threats for losing their jobs, as new public sector cuts are promised by one fat politician, to another confused representative, overlooking the enforcement of the new bailout contract clauses. My parents' joint pension, if they were to receive pension, would be 600 euros a month.

 

Last Christmas I woke up by gunshots. Syringes decorate the streets and the police terrorise anyone looking out of place (apart from the drug dealers and those muscly beefy guys who misspell their racist-hatred graffiti) . You feel they are assessing you by some outrageous checklist, indicative of wealth and 'greekness' (dreamt up by a person competing with horror-stories I could have written during my rebellious anarchist teenage years).

There are several people living in our street bin and we get cockroaches on sticks thrown in the house, by people walking by, out of some sort of 'you vs us'. For standing out as different, in our old, two-floor Athenian townhouse,in the middle of a grey concrete twelve-floor flat jungle.

I am ashamed for everyone. This sad decline is confused as immigration struggle. A perfect scapegoat for the fattening bellies of the ones who have the ability to go on holiday, or buy mustard. I am ashamed I couldn't afford to fly back for the two elections we had last year, as all-of-a-sudden our Suffrage voting was revoked, without warning, and 40 per cent of young Greeks found themselves unable to vote at our Embassies around the world. For a country were voting is mandatory by law, 40 per cent abstinence is an abomination of a government.

 

The number of suicides has increased. Students at my mum's school faint from malnutrition. She has to pay for photocopies, as the school has no funds. Over 70 PER CENT of the student population failed this year's final maths exams (equivalent to A Level finals).

 

And some ignorant people shouting this is about foreigners, debt, Germany, or about Europe. No hope and everyone in my generation who could, has already left the country to find work abroad (most of them struggling further), after University. Did we all ask for this? Did we all play our part? Is it important?

 

This is about a European fail to recognise human rights standards and requirements, before proceeding in financial negotiations. Capitalism, confused Europe with Euro.

 

A few months ago, a guy was trying his luck with me in a Brixton pub. 'So you are Greek' he said, 'Ha, that's a crazy place. You guys should grow up and start acting like adults and stop spending all we lend you'. I am not sure what he wanted to hear, but I stared at him and found myself speechless for the second time in my life (first time, when someone called my mum names- in actual reality). If there are people who really think Greece is just one person that stays in, ordering expensive clothes online, gambling, drinking champagne and generally wasting immense amounts of money on nothing, who will tell them about the forced bail-outs, private gain from investments, agreements with buying new weapons, Olympics works and private German companies building them? Who will explain that given the option of a black market-sure-fire-death and a European Developed World, voters would never opt for the first one? Who will tell them that this situation is as serious as any other human disaster around?

Guess, I've taken on this role then: This is Europe's fault and this is the Greek government's fault, and how bloody dare you!

 

 

======

 

And this one, next, is more positive - how I envisage the mindset I would have to adapt and survive if I had to.

 

If you don't have the mindset of the "can do" attitude, I can see why so many fall into a mental depression.

 

standards

 

 

Living in a rural/coastal area, I can keep many expenses under control, especially food and leisure costs. We grow vegetables all year round, we don't cook meat more than twice a week, we stock up on high-quality discounted food. This is readily available for all residents in my locality; even apartment residents can grow potted gardens, and supermarkets offer lots of cheap food offers. Living in such a beautiful part of Europe/the world, you do not need to go far to have a good time. Nor do you need to spend so much money to do this. Keeping cool in summer usually involves keeping a door and window open; most Cretans have switched to burning wood in winter, in wood-fired heaters in which a meal can also be cooked. Schooling is hardly ever private, there are no school uniforms and people are using alternative methods for keeping their kids in extra-curricular activities. Life can be lived very frugally in Crete - but only if you want to do this.

 

 

------

 

A social network for bartering and the rise of fascism.

 

The Bank of Time

 

 

By Charlie Yaxley

Barely a few months pass without the well-rehearsed portrayal of Greece as a country in the grips of violence and riots adoring our screens. But this narrative of a fractured and divided country ignores the ways in which the Greek people are rising above the crisis, and working together to overcome the challenges presented by the Eurozone crisis.

 

Born from the fires of a protest around a year and a half ago, a group named Trapeza Chronou, literally translated as ‘The Bank of Time’, is rejecting the idea monetary exchange in favour of an insistence that value lies only within time itself.

 

For every hour of service a member provides, they are entitled to receive one hour of another member’s service in return. Whatever the service you provide, it is, and must be, equal to any other service provided by someone else.

 

‘The time of the doctor is equal to the time of the cleaning lady. No one is more important than the other. We are all equal. The hour is always worth the same’ insisted Christine Papadopoulou, one of the founding members of the group.

Christine, an English teacher, is beaming with pride as she informs me that the group has grown into a community of over 1300 members.

 

‘We created a website with the help of volunteers, no money was given, where you can register an account and create your profile. Kind of like Facebook. Each profile has an account which shows your transactions, the hours you have accumulated and the time credit you currently hold.’

 

Christine begins to reel off a list of backgrounds their members come from and the services they provide for each other. With no restrictions on who can join, the group is an eclectic mix of people seeking an alternative way of co-existence.

Teachers, plumbers, psychologists, Raki therapists, lawyers and more are all coming together to share whatever skills they have accumulated over the years, be it though their job, hobbies or any other means.

Discussion on the diversity of the group leads us on to one of the darker consequences of the economic crisis in Greece. The far-right is currently enjoying a resurgence in the form of Chrysi Avgi, or Golden Dawn. Polls currently position the party in third place, and worryingly not too far behind the main party of the coalition government, Nea Dimokratia, and the party currently ahead, the leftist Syriza.

 

There have been widespread reports of the police having been infiltrated by Chrysi Avgi, and not only turning a blind eye to crimes against immigrants, but actively encouraging or even participating in them.

 

Stavrula, another co-founder of the group, and Christine get increasingly animated as they speak of their fears about those exploiting the atmosphere of insecurity pervading the country.

 

‘If you look in history, there were the same problems before the Second World War and this led to fascism. I’m really scared for the future. I hope history does not repeat itself. I’m really afraid of it and I hope I am wrong,’ says Stavrula.

‘We are not only for Greeks. We want all the people, including immigrants, in Greece to get involved. There are groups in Greece at the moment that are racist and will only allow Greeks but we don’t want that at our Bank of Time. Everyone can join whether they are Greek or not!’

 

Chrysi Avgi are increasingly cementing their support in the poorer areas of Athens through actively engaging in community work, such as the Greek-only food banks springing up across the city. With immigration still a relatively new phenomena in Greece, their nationalism is finding sympathetic ears amongst those who feel they have nowhere left to turn.

‘My greatest fear for Greece is not poverty, it’s civil war or the rebirth of fascism. It’s scary. Greek people were really friendly and accepting of other ethnicities before’ Stavrula solemnly informs me.

 

It’s easy to understand why the group want to ensure party politics is left and the door and that members focus on their collaborative efforts.

 

‘Political issues in The Bank of Time can be really delicate and mess with our balance so we try to keep party politics out of it. We focus on our shared belief of the value of exchanging time. Some people are members of political parties, some aren’t, some are anarchists, but we don’t care who is what. We came here as individuals with the same goal and so we don’t discuss about party politics’, Stavrula tells me.

 

It certainly seems to be an approach that is working for them. Within and beyond their 1300 members, new bonds and communities have been formed directly out of the group. They are united by their shared desire to provide each other with security more than the search of any unified political ideal.

 

Similar groups are beginning to emerge all over the country. In the port city of Volos, individuals, and increasingly businesses, are rejecting the Euro in favour of a new local currency, the TEM, a Greek abbreviation for ‘Alternative Local Currency’. Patra has seen the emergence of the Ovolos network, named after an ancient Greek currency, where time and local currency can be exchanged. The new bonds these groups are creating are not restricted to each group’s region either as these initiatives increasingly seek to collaborate and learn from each other. Last October saw the launch of what is hoped to become the annual Festival of Economic Solidarity. Over 100 groups come together to host seminars, concerts, workshops, discussion groups, art exhibitions, a bazaar for the exchange of goods and of course, its own currency.

 

‘It’s ended up being like a small village, a small community of people, who meet each other, interact, and see how they can cover their needs from each other,’ said Christine. ‘And this is solidarity in action.’

 

yaxle

Link to comment
Share on other sites

iRO7Xq4DsYIM.jpg

Laundry hangs to dry on fencing outside the 2004 Olympic Tae Kwon Do center in Faliro, near Athens, on March 21, 2012.

 

Greece Austerity Diet Risks 1930s-Style Depression: Euro Credit

 

http://www.bloomberg...uro-credit.html

 

---

 

Britain had the Olympics in 2012 - we Britain face the same "rhyme" in 2020?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the recommendation! I think I will ask for it for Christmas - Andreas Clenow's book is very heavy going, and it will take some time to digest.

 

The more I look a round, the more similar pattern I see with trend following traders; They go through these stages;

 

1. Trading or Investing blindly with no rules. One can be stuck at this stage for probably 3 years - or decades, or never get out of here.

 

2. System discovery from reading and wanting to learn and develop (e.g. way of the Turtles book)

 

3. System application, but inconsistent rule following.

 

4. Psychological reprogramming, and Profitability.

 

5. Blog posting, less bulletin board posting on actual stocks (and falling in love with them).

 

6. Blog turns into or becomes part of a website that has a twitter feed, shop with their own ebook, and 1-1 mentoring program. There are Youtube videos, news letters, hardback book publication etc.

 

[i am probably between 4 and 5. I am unlikely to want to go to stage 6 though]

 

----

 

I can count probably 10 "businesses" that do this. Some I have mentioned in this diary.

 

Why do they need to sell a system if it can make money? Why would they tell you how, when they can keep it for themselves?

 

Basically, there is no limit to greed and the desire for more. Sure if the system is profitable, there is the time element, and risk element. You have to wait for the trades to play out and have risk.

 

Selling information, the money is in the pocket straight away, and the risk is minimized - there is a lot of upside, much more than 30% return! If it costs next to nothing to produce an ebook, that is an infinite return! Additionally some people sell part of their system (you can start from £20 and go all the way up to £2000) or all of their system - you don't know what you are getting. It pays to read around, and devise your own system I certainly believe.

 

Very true.

 

From followingthetrend.com

 

A good trading system usually costs around USD 5.000 and the really profitable ones cost even more. Right?

 

Wrong.

 

Whatever you do, never ever pay for trading rules. A professional would never buy trading rules, just as a professional would never sell them. There is a misguided perception especially among the retail hobby traders that if they could just get their hands on those perfect rules, all their problems would be gone and they would be millionaires in no time at all. This is naturally exploited by thousands of crafty entrepreneurs around the world who are happy to help out by selling some MetaStock or TradeStation code for a few thousand bucks.

 

 

Trend following is not complicated. Profitability does not go up if you add more magic indicators and make up some scientific sounding names for them. What I want to demonstrate with this site and with my book, is that CTA style cross asset trend following is quite simple in terms of trading rules. The difficulty does not lay with the buy and sell rules and focusing on them will only distract you from the real difficulties. Buying trend following trading rules is simply a waste of time and money. Focus instead on understanding the task at hand, how the diversification and risk plays in, how the strategy behaves during different types of markets and learn to understand the ideas behind. Fantasies about making millions from bought rules off some website will not aid you.

 

 

Almost all cross asset CTA trend followers do the same thing. They use minor variations of the same rules. This is very easy to prove by reverse engineering them, changing a few parameters to the core system presented on this site and you can easily get up to 0.9 correlation with most of them. They use different indicators etc, but the point is that it makes so little difference that they are in essence trading the same system.

 

 

I think I'm currently in the 2-3 going on 4 stage ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

“Successful speculation requires staying on top of changes in industries and companies that either create new industries or improve on existing industries. The majority of your profits will come from these two … The shrewdest traders throughout history all adapted the skill of reactionary change, as the market constantly presents new and different opportunities.” Bernard Baruch

 

One original strategy I can think of in this age of automation, is to be long automation companies and short dinosaur companies. Like it or not "progress" marches on, and the coming end to the age of jobs is fast upon us.

 

Here is a list as a start to this strategy.

 

Long candidates

Google - automated driving vehicles, many other inovations.

NCR corporation - ATM machines, self service tills

Acrelor - self service kiosks in McDonalds +others. Not a listed company.

Optimal payments - online payments

IBM - Giant in computer solutions

 

Smaller companies

@UK - procurement and cloud

Eckoh - automated call centre

Gresham computers - banking back office regulatory

Processing

 

Short candidates

Weight watchers

 

When the US outlawed online gambling the traditional bricks and mortar casinos breathed a sigh of relief. But in the land of the free (!) there is now an opening for New Jersey to allow online gambling later this year. If this spreads to the other states, I would consider all US casino businesses which are core bricks and mortar operations to be potential shorting candidates when the right technical signal is present. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2396196/British-Irish-online-gambling-giants-bet-American-jackpot-look-sign-deals-US-casino-operators-New-Jersey.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Make a note of these to look upon the health of equities, globally. These might prove to be better than the SP500 to decide how much to be long/short or just sit and wait.

 

ACWI - iShares MSCI ACWI Index Fund

 

VT - Vanguard Total World Stock ETF

 

http://www.zacks.com...Equity-Exposure

 

There are more on that link, but the top two show up better on the charts. Notably they all show confirming patterns.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looking back at the portfolios - it was wrong to start separating the small caps and putting them in a separate portfolio. Most of the super gains came from the smaller speculative caps! The fixed line telecoms, such as BT although have gained in the 5-8% range, since they were bought, they really haven't done much as "leaders" since.

 

I think it is important to "follow the leaders" to ensure they are advancing in up trending market if long, but limit exposure to a handful of them.

 

"Elephants don't gallop - but fleas can jump to over two hundred times their own height" Jim Slater (I believe that is in The Zulu Principle book, another book I need to get)

 

I believe Mr Slater or a relative has invested in CML microsystems (one of the first stocks in this diary) LSE:CML - which has 10 bagged over the last couple of years, and it has broken out past the £5 level - it is still a small cap! Shame I didn't hold all the way on, but I have been in and out of this one. Fear not, there are opportunities, always, and this is the mindset one must have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...