Answers

Dear Mr. Seykota;

I writing this email to seek your advise.

In March 08 I was given an account worth $100,000.00 to trade. My net returns year to date are 36.9% after 50% of performance fee.

Now, I want to raise more money what is the most effective way to do that?

All my experience has been in the stock market.

Sincerely,

In the meanwhile, you might consider repeating what seems to work for you: namely, you can  "was given" another account.

lf_nm_life/us_financial_psychology

Best to you,

OK.

Ed,

After letting my emotions drive my trading, fighting with my wife, and neglecting my children. I realize that everything I have been doing to better myself is not enough. I need something more, something different. I begin reading the Trading Tribe book, again. This time it makes more sense. This time it describes me better. This time I’ve been doing all of the “right” things (church, sobriety, therapist, friends, family) and I can see clearly that it is not enough. As I read, it feels as though the solution is in my hands. It is truth. It makes sense. I feel relief.

The next morning, I wake up, and encourage myself to feel. I begin to feel sick to my stomach. I rapidly make a decision to not feel this now, but recognize that I need to tend to this soon.

I question whether or not to trade. It occurs to me that the trend will continue whether I’m in or out. I place a buy stop above the market. When I get to work, I check my account. I am up significantly.

I tell my wife about my experience, realization, and decision. She is unsure of the idea of starting a tribe. I support her feelings of uncertainty.

I explain to her that I don’t want to hurt her, my children, or myself any longer, and that I believe a tribe will help.

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I'm ready for a change and willing to commit to this path to advance the growth of others and myself. God, church, AA, counseling, friends and family ... are not enough. I need a tribe.

OK. You know what to do.

This has got to stop. Thanks for showing me how to make money, now I'd like to take the actions necessary to learn how to benefit from my pain, sadness, anger, and fear. I’m sorry I haven’t started a tribe sooner.

Thank you for sharing your #@**&^! process.

1. Are the American people collectively really getting what we want?

Sincerely,

Carpenters%20tools.jpg

Warmest

OK.

Hmmm...  I hear the new specie is in modern digital form, to save the inconvenience and expense of printing it on hard paper.

Dear Ed:

I'm a personal trader from [Country], I'm very happy to read your FAQ, Here is main problem cover my entire trading life .

I changing my system parameters all the time. Once I meet some problem in future market, I will do some back-test , and always, I will find the best parameters changed, so I always changing it according, I know it's not right .

I use breakout system with 2 parameters. I know the methods to get Best & Reliable F (X,Y) , my question is : how to overcome the best parameters changes. I don't want to change my parameters anymore .

do you have good suggestion , I'm appreciate your wisdom.

Best Regards!

Let me know how many days you can keep this up.

I am completely against the $85,000,000,000.00 AIG bailout. Instead, I am in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in the form of a "We Deserve It Dividend".

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens over 18. The population is about 300,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So, 200,000,000 might be a 'fair stab' at adults 18 years old and up.. So divide the 200 million into $85 billion /and that equals $425,000.00 ((each)) !!

My simple plan would give $425,000 to every person over 18 as a "We Deserve It Dividend". This would NOT be tax free, of course. So let’s assume an average tax rate of 30%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

This means every adult over 18 has $297,500.00 in their pocket. A husband and wife - has $595,000.00. What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back now. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces as well...

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen over 18 !!

As for AIG –
• Just liquidate it.
• Sell off its parts.
• Sell off the real estate.
• Let bargain hunters clean it up.

And remember, The Family plan only really costs $59.5 billion because $25.5 billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

I feel so much better now - after getting all that off my chest !!

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1. Consider more dimensions of the relationship - such as: degree of compatibility of interests, alignment on common livelihood, similarity of language and thought patterns and commitment to mutual growth.

2. Respond to closeness by supporting closeness; respond to distance by supporting distance.

3. Allow a relationship to be exactly the way it is - not trying to change it, or the other person or myself.

4. Implement pro-active relationship management strategies: monitor feelings and report experience in the now as things go along - in a constructive manner.


With regard to supporting closeness and distance, in my experience in the past, I would usually focus on supporting the other partner's "closeness" or "distance". I found this was to some extent part of a codependent pattern in which I did not acknowledge my own feelings of closeness or distance, or how I felt about the relationship.

Over the time I came to realize that, as a matter of fact, I can only be responsible for my feelings and guide myself by them, and let the other be responsible for theirs.

So statement no. 2 above is not quite clear for me: who wants to be close and who wants to be distant? Perhaps you are the one playing the paddleball, or you might be the ball yourself.

So I encourage you to acknowledge your own feelings about <distance> and <closeness> and take your feelings about swinging in between them to Tribe (if you have not already done so).

The essence of the shift is to move from wanting a <level of closeness> to appreciating the <level of closeness> that currently exists.

I should preface this correspondence first by saying thank you. When I read your book and visited the TT site, I felt almost as if you were talking about, or to me.

I'm not sure I can accurately verbalize what my first Tribe meeting was like ... but I do know how it made me feel ... Electrified! - Thanks, in large part, to the fantastic group of people that make up the [City] Tribe.

Participating with the Tribe as a receiver for the very first time, I was fortunate enough to witness a sender deliver as intense of a session as I could have imagined ... make that more intense than I had imagined.

You could actually see, that the person who took the seat and the person who left it, were two very different people. Everything about him changed. Posture, expressions - even mannerisms. From a man who looked like someone just ran over his dog, to the guy with the winning power ball ticket in his hip pocket ... all in about 45 minutes.

Granted, I have no frame of reference outside of your book (TT), and your website ... but based on what I've read, I think even a seasoned TTP veteran would agree that this hot seat was HOT!, HOT!, HOT!

Something I hadn't expected to feel: as good as sending felt in the end for the person in the hot seat ...  felt a profound sense of calm, levity and satisfaction along with him by just being there, beating my funky new drum and joining my fellow Tribe members in creating a field of acknowledgment conducive for feeling (healing). It was, and is, a rather unexpected but incredibly enjoyable side-effect of TTP.

I feel compelled ... to tell you what a wonderful thing I believe you've created, excited ... to become as solid an asset to my Tribe as they are to one another, and eager ... to unearth Right Livelihood (a.k.a. "Work is Love made Visible").

I've just taken the first step, and am already enjoying the journey. Thank you Ed, for sharing your everything.

Thank you for sharing your process and for your encouragement.

All following values will deviate as well. Thanks

You might consider taking your feelings about <math> to Tribe.

"Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be."

The other 97% seem to be content with taking their feds.

"Everyone gets what they want." - Ed

You now use an extremely small font size on FAQ's right side, where answers appear.

This might indicate you want readers to squint.

You might want them to cut-and-paste lengthily FAQ answers into word processors, to increase font to readable size.

A good example is the detailed FAQ answer listed at [Monday, August 25, 2008].

Please consider increasing the font size to at least the font size used on the left side column of FAQ

I do not see the tiny-print effect on my browser.  I wonder if you can investigate this further to determine the line of html code that excites that mode.

Here's a problem: yields on 30 day or less t-bills are negative. They are selling for over par. That's a first.

In a gold-standard economy, prices fall as technology lowers the cost of production.  Interest rates are, naturally, negative - you pay your banker to hold your gold.

Hope to hear from you soon.

You might consider taking your feelings about <wanting a sure thing> to Tribe.

It reminds me of people holding onto a once great trending stock as it clearly breaks down but they go in search of good news and reasons to hold. They only listen to people who tell them what they want to hear. Only when it is too late do they look back and say "yes ... I should have seen the trend change here." Where will this climate change trend end for the earth? Politicians say they are going to do something but when all is said and done much more is said than actually done. I guess the problem is still out in the future (how far though?) and human nature is to only concern ourselves with the now. Thank you

Clip: http://www.effectofglobalwarming.com/

What's up with the American economy? Investors, traders and government seem confused and not sure which way to go, what to do or what to expect. What's your view?

Same 'ol same 'ol.

Soon, I will buy your book and am eagerly anticipating it. I notice that it seems there are no Tribes in the [City] area is this still the case?

You can consult the Tribe Directory and / or start your own Tribe.

By dropping its weak branches, the tree increases its chances of surviving the storm.

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Normally I am the nice guy who offers to help but in this case I clearly see myself telling her that I am no longer interested in being enrolled in her issues and that I am happily married now. I cut the encounter short and leave. I think about this quite a bit over the past few days. Is Fred registering new ways to act in such circumstances? I wonder.

Thank you for offering the continuous opportunity to grow and develop through TTP and FAQ. How can we, your friends from afar support and help you?

Clip: http://www.dealoz.com/

Hi Ed,

Ed says, "The Gambler's Fallacy confuses case probability with class probability." (FAQ, Uncertainty, 4/15/08)

What is case probability and class probability?

Thanks.

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Dear Mr. Ed Seykota,

I completed the Diversification study using historical data from CRB and I have attached the results in the e-mail. Also, I have included the results of the EA and SR studies where my results match exactly the data on your website.

For the Diversification study I generated Panama style continuous contracts using the first true method. The equity graphs I produced are similar to the equity graphs found on your website; however, they do not match exactly. The origin of the mismatch is most likely due to the method used to generate the data and the range of contract deliveries used - perhaps you used the last true method to generate the copper and crude oil continuous contracts. Sometimes the trading days of different instruments within a time period do not match. In this study I deleted the ‘extra’ trading days and their corresponding data.

Currently I am looking at position sizing and pyramiding in the EA system. When the equity in the portfolio increases during an up-trend, the position size is updated every five trading days to bring the portfolio heat to 0.1. Currently the system adjusts the position with 0 skid and 0 commission. I am working to improve further the pyramiding method.

Ralph Vince mentions in his book ‘The Handbook of Portfolio Mathematics’ that the method of pyramiding according to a schedule is virtually unseen, but it is achieved in each market using different trading systems that give entry signals at different price levels. Do you have the same view?

I have developed a love for the markets and I am determined to succeed in this field. I do not have experience, but I do have the skills to develop mechanical trading systems, patience, and I will work hard to learn and improve my knowledge. Could I possibly work for you for free? Thank you for your time and consideration, I remain at your disposal for anything further.

I think we may be able to collaborate on some studies.

Requirement

I'm sure you are disgusted by the bailout. I know I am. It is fairly obvious 700B is not enough; I read in some places that estimates as high as 20 trillion are required.

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Right now, I experience sadness, frustration, anger and disappointment. I don't want someone to comfort me; I want to investigate these feelings, I want my Tribe to help me explore them and to discover their positive intention. I want to reconcile myself with these feelings and to integrate them into my resources.

2005/08/

I start a further Tribe in [City]. This
tribe meets on different days and with other members.

Cordially,

I recall starting a few Tribes myself.

The vigilantes elicited the response in everyone's interest for the time being, shoring up the former white-shoes and enabling massive increases in commands and regulations to be acceptable to everyone.

When will Ed return?

I can keep checking up on this situation as this moment evolves.

Rights

Hi Ed,

Ed says: "There are no 'fundamental rights.' There are only rights that one entity voluntarily awards another entity." (9/30/07 FAQ, Health Care and Fundamental Rights)

Do you agree when they (the founding Fathers) say we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?

Thanks.

Assets/Images/bill-of-rights-01.gif 

Entropy

Hi Ed,

Ed says, "Living organisms decrease entropy (randomness) internally by increasing it externally." (FAQ 4/9/2003, Heads and Tails).

Can you give some examples and tell us more about it? Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

Suddenly, I see my father looming over me with a belt and as he is about to beat me, I let out a bloodcurdling scream that frightens me. The screams make it seem like I am in horrible pain.

I relive an experience from my childhood perhaps, one that I cannot very vividly recall. I do not know if the vision of my father is merely imagined or a composite of experience. I will continue my work and am very grateful to have the support of [my] Tribe.

Clip: http://www.shadyminx.com/resources/RJ06.jpg

Hmmm ... I wonder if this location is the epicenter of the recent California real estate vibration.