How have noted Trend Followers pulled millions from the market? They plan their trades and trade their plans. Think about it.
Keep It Simple
We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being who could observe the present state of the universe without disturbing it. However such models of the universe are not of much interest to us mortals. It seems better to employ the principle known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory which cannot be observed."
Stephen Hawking
What is Hawking driving at? Trading rules must be easily explained. All great trading concepts avoid layers and layers of interconnected rules. Tradestation might invent invent hypothetical profits, but is this wise? Occam's razor dictates that if there are two trading methods that achieve similar results, choose the simpler method. Period.
Change
Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can't be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.
Jesse Livermore
Doubt Livermore? You think 2003 is somehow different? Here are the hot tech stocks of 1968:
| Company |
1968 High |
1970 Low |
% drop |
P/E at High |
| Fairchild Camera |
$102.00 |
$18.00 |
-82% |
443 |
| Teledyne |
72.00 |
13.00 |
-82 |
42 |
| Control Data |
163.00 |
28.00 |
-83 |
54 |
| Mohawk Data |
111.00 |
18.00 |
-84 |
285 |
| Electronic Data |
162.00 |
24.00 |
-85 |
352 |
| Optical Scanning |
146.00 |
16.00 |
-89 |
200 |
| Itek |
172.00 |
17.00 |
-90 |
71 |
| University Computing |
186.00 |
13.00 |
-93 |
118 |
The names change. The year changes. The market might change. Trend Following using price data never changes. More.
