Questions

(Quotes from Ed in Red)

Answers

Sun, 29 Feb 2004

Family Tribe

Yes. Family is the Essential Tribe.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. ~ C. S. Lewis

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Family

The Essential Tribe

Clip: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/

Sun, 29 Feb 2004

About Copyrights

OK.

One approach to writing is to go with the flow, and be considerate of others.

An approach to winning the Boston Marathon (according to one of the winners) Is to avoid fried foods and never look back.

FAQ does not recommend what you should do.

For more opinions and analysis on copyrights, see:

http://www.templetons.com/

brad/copymyths.html

http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/copynet.htm

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/

issue5/copyright/

http://www.fno.org/jun96/legal.html

Sun, 29 Feb 2004

DIY TTP pt2

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the answer on DIT TTP, Wed 11 2004.

I still have one particular problem - what do you mean by " ...to just experience the feeling"?

I don't have any entries for Wed 11, 2004. (No Month). 

Experiencing feelings, Sending and Receiving, in the TTP sense, is something people seem to learn best in person.  You might consider joining a tribe or attending a Workshop.

Talking about feelings is not the same as experiencing them.

Sex manual is not the same as sex.

Reading about Football

is not the same

as being on the field.

Clip: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Sat, 28 Feb 2004

Set it and ... Forget it!

Some FAQ readers might be familiar with the Ronco infomercials, such as the one for the Showtime Rotisserie.

This fellow Ron seems to know how to follow the system and stay with the trends.

Showtime Trading System: “Set it and … Forget it!”

Note: Traders may also want to remember to manage risk and keep an eye on their daily P&Ls to make sure the system is following the intentions of its developer.

If you are trying to avoid the feelings of following a system, you can forget to remember them, or remember to forget them.  Forgetting to forget them and remembering to remember them don't work so well.

You can also experience the feelings of following your system and convert them from nemeses to allies.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

Syllabus retention after an hour is about 50%, after 31 days, about 25%.

Clip: http://www.unc.edu/

Sat, 28 Feb 2004

The Polarity process is something I use in the Incline Tribe from time to time and plan to bring to the Workshop. 

It has to do with endowing your body with alternatives, and using TTP to processing through to a decision, kinesthetically.

Processes seem to propagate best person-to-person ... at a workshop, or by some of the Pollinator Bees that buzz from tribe to tribe.

"One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. His response was a question: 'Where do you want to go?' 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.'" -- Lewis Carroll

Pair of Forks in the Road

Clip: http://physics.kenyon.edu/

EarlyApparatus/Acoustics/

Sat, 28 Feb 2004

Fired Up for Workshop

(attending for the second time)

Hi Ed,

People seem to catch on to TTP  face-to-face, by practicing it with someone who knows how to do it.

One big contribution you can make is just to attend and practice with others.

Sat, 28 Feb 2004

Sat, 28 Feb 2004

Confirmation

Hi Ed,

I would like to confirm the continued presence of my name & contact info in the Intentional Community Directory. So far, I have been contacted about TTP by around 3 people in India, but none of them from Chennai. However, we are trying to work out a meeting, hopefully not too far into the future.

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

The Crocodile allows the Plover to enter it's mouth and take bits of food.  The Plover gets a free meal and the Crocodile gets clean teeth and gums.

The Trend Trader allows scalpers to take a few points here and there, against the day when he just wants to keep buying and buying and buying ... and the scalpers get to experience drinking out of a fire hose at close range.

The Plover

Lives on pieces of food and leeches

he finds in the mouths of crocodiles.

Good legs are helpful

in this line of work.

Clip: http://birdingonthe.net/

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

Exhilaration

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

Fred and I

Hello Ed,

I am diligently working with TTP for about nine months, for a total of about 20 hot seat experiences. Out of the 20 I would say 4-5 are accompanied by major AHA's and tremendous outpouring of emotions.

The first big one is when [Name 1] from the Toronto tribe participated in our group and the second when [Name 2] from your Incline Village group attended our meeting. The other 2-3 very intense hot seat experience are with [Name 3] the leader for the second Manhattan group ... Interesting how Fred finds allies to help.

In fall of 2003 my focus and the target for Hardball is to 'Consistently follow my system'. I am pleased to say as a result of Hardball after 15 long years of not following my systems, now I am able to consistently follow my system and I have No Urge to do non system trades.

I believe whatever feelings are in the way of me consistently following my systems are now dissolved. This is a major major achievement and accomplishment for me !

OK.

When you Get to the Center

Of the Onion

you get another onion.

Clip: http://www.rosemaryr.com/

HTML/Gall9b6.htm

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

Workshop Question

Hello Ed,

I have a question about your comments below, could you please clarify how they relate to a 100% mechanical systems trader?

I thought all the "ritualistic trading activities" are incorporated into a system and then it leaves no room for 'subtle and unconscious activities" that dominate trading. Are you referring to discretionary traders?

Thanks.

Ed Says:

Your "room for subtle" does not incorporate into in your conscious system or computer program; it appears in your emotional response patterns.

My experience is that about 20% of the activities you perform as a trader contribute about 80% of your profit - and that the other 80% of the things you do,  have, at best, no effect.

Vilfredo Pareto, 1848-1923

Famous for 80:20

The Pareto Principle: the 80/20 rule: about 20 of the effort produces about 80 of the result; 20 of the people produce 80 of the work; etc.

Pareto's Law of income distribution: 

    log N = log A + m log x 

Pareto's Pet Concept: Ophelimity

Clip: http://cepa.newschool.edu/

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

Talent

The sculptor begins the statue by imposing his image on the stone -- and ends by taking away what the statue tells him doesn't belong on it.

At first, he has the talent, later it has him.

You can try to impose your will on the markets, or let them tell you what to do.

To look up something on this site, use "Search this Site", above.

Sculpture Patiently Waits

inside the stone

until a sculptor sets it free;

Clip: http://www.users.bigpond.com/

Fri, 27 Feb 2004

On the Tribe Directory Page, a grey-out entry indicates no response to the "Are you still operating" survey.

According to 50% of people surveyed,

if you want to know something,

take a survey.

Survey says Brits are Foreplay Flops

Brits are a flop when it comes to foreplay, according to the biggest ever survey of its kind.

The research found 80% of British men didn't even know what foreplay was, mistaking it for a sport, a computer game or an item of clothing.

Jordan, chosen to front the event, said: "These results are so shocking that even I was surprised.

"Sex without foreplay is like toast without butter and yet some people in this country think that it's okay to get away without doing it, but not in my book.

Men rated themselves very highly at foreplay, with 70% giving themselves 9/10 for their technique. But the ladies begged to differ. They gave men just 6/10, and rated themselves even lower, at 5/10.

Clip: http://www.ananova.com/

Thu, 26 Feb 2004

Hi Chief !

Welcome

Prince George !

You are on the Directory Page

British Columbia

is in the red

and so are most all countries.

Clip: http://www.livejournal.com/

Wed, 25 Feb 2004

Reading

Yes.

Dr. Arnold Mindell's Process Work holds that the solution to a problem locates within the disturbance itself. 

Dr. Stanislav Grof holds that the symptom is the cure in action.

TTP holds that experiencing feelings

is a basic intention of life itself.

Wed, 25 Feb 2004

FYI

Ed,

I have not felt compelled to update you on the progress of the [Location] group for sometime. We continue with the work. From my subjective point of view we engage deeper levels of feeling and experience.

I do feel compelled to write about a personal and I believe related experience. First some background -- My wife's business fluctuates with the city's economy and she finds it in a significant contraction. This has caused a great deal of concern, she has laid off staff, far fewer jobs come in the door and those that do have a smaller scale.

She and her partner bicker more often. Over the past weeks she has spoken frequently of feeling overwhelmed and frightened, but more often expresses this in anger and frustration at me, our children, or anything else in her path. I recognize much of the same feeling, avoidance of feeling, and consequent dramatic reaction in myself as I experience some of the inevitable reversals of promise and fortune associated with my current efforts to raise capital for a new hedge fund. At our worst our dramas seem to amplify each other's and we spiral into escalating anger and destructive interaction.

Over the past months, like many others, I have noted a kind of migration of TTP awareness and practice into broader areas of my life and interactions with others. But, last night something had caught me which seemed to displace all I had learned.

I came home late from a meeting with interested investors, a good step in the right direction. The family had eaten, the children had finished their homework, we spent the evening in an easy family way. The kids went off to bed, my wife and I curled up together unwinding in front of the TV.

Just before we went to bed, she said something about work, I don't even remember the comment, yet it echoed in me setting off a twinge of anxiety and fear. By the time I shut off the lights I found my wife asleep in bed. I crawled into bed, but could not fall asleep, anxiety and a kind of despondency seemed to build through hours of restlessness.

Over the past months, I have increasingly found myself, when under stress or caught up in a negative spiral, able to enter a TTP like state on my own, letting myself embrace the full scope of even upsetting and difficult feelings and experiencing an internal shift (Ahhhh!), which often triggers yet another feeling continuing the process. This more often than not leads to an experiential if not cognitively different perspective on the underlying matter. Rather than a "do it yourself" process it feels more like a natural extension of TTP and hardball into more areas of my life.

I deliberately tried this, but for the first time nothing I tried could bring me to a place wherein I could let myself have the feelings, instead the anxiety and despair continued to overwhelm me, my mind continued to
race.

It seemed as if every fear my wife has carried over the past months, had found a comparable frequency resonating within my own psyche. Sometime after 3 AM I passed into an unresolved numb like sleep, yet somehow grew increasingly aware that my wife grew increasingly fit full. By 5 AM she woke me. In a kind of agony of despair, sobbing, and defeat she began to talk: about her fear, about feeling overwhelmed, and about wanting it all to stop.

I listened as carefully as I could given my lack of sleep and the early hour, yet felt her somehow distanced from a direct experience of the feelings -- she kept talking "about" the feelings rather than experiencing them. At one point she said, "...can't we just make love and stop all of this for a while..." The moment did not support that desperate desire.

Instead, without a word, I took her into my arms, not to comfort her, but to "receive" her. I have neither words nor context to properly relate the measure of the experience, which followed.

I felt wave upon wave of what I can only describe as  feeling / sensation / emotion cascade through my body setting off intense trembling and physical spasms, which sprung unbidden from different places inside of me.

Each wave passing / resolving as the physical sensations transformed me or perhaps more precisely transformed through me. I noted, what I have in past Ahhhh experiences recognized as endorphin released tears streaming down my face and great yawns accompanying / simultaneous - with the release of tension.

I don't know how long we spent like that, it felt out of time. My wife said nothing about my trembling and spasms, even though I had experienced them physically moving her! After a time the "receiving" subsided. I asked my wife how she felt. She replied in a exhausted, but deeply calm voice, "tired," and fell into a deep sleep still wrapped in my arms.

The promise of NLP and Western therapy in general, is to alleviate suffering, to somehow get rid of  "bad" feelings.

For example, the NLP methods of Swish, Bypass and Shunt all aim to  move you past "bad"  feelings and on to "good" ones.

As you point out, when you attempt to use TTP to effect deliverance, it does not "work."

Left to our own devices, we tend to go for the fix, rather than just being there with the condition.  In service to each other, we tend to return to our willingness to just be.

As long as you have an agenda to get better or to get rid of feelings, you tend to hold back from fully experiencing your feelings in the now.

When you fully experience your anxiety and despair, unconditionally, and fully, it does not go away.  It rather turns kind of inside out and re-vivifies as part of your emotional control panel, one of your allies. This may accompany emotional release and insight (Aha!)

Your narration of your subsequent receiving of your wife is consistent with tapping into the joy.

Resistance to feeling the joy may manifest as paroxysmal spasms and waves of shuddering.

You might consider fully allowing your anxiety and your joy to manifest and receive each other. 

Intense communion tends to radiate and heal those around you.  I feel you and your wife are fortunate to have each other along the path, and your friends are fortunate to have you as inspiration and reference.

Sending and Receiving

become one.

Clip:  http://www.warhols.com/

lovers%20.jpg.jpg

Wed, 25 Feb 2004

Wed, 25 Feb 2004

I do not see a contradiction.

The trend is your friend except at the ends where it bends.

Astute Cyclists

don't try to tell the path

where it "should" go.

Clip: http://www.suite101.com/files/

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

OK.  Here's one for you ... and be sure to write again in 2024.

Clip: http://www.wilken.freeserve.co.uk/

Montypython/Songs/song36.htm

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

Site-Specific Search for TTFAQ

Ed,

Here is the resend of Seykota-Search. Here are some interesting facts:

1. See this Google site-specific search feature implemented at

 www.newtechusa.com

at the bottom of the home page. This is how it ultimately looks on any site. Google provides some options I zero out, such as 'search WWW'. My implementation searches my site only.

2. Google provides the generic setup, free at:

 http://www.google.com/searchcode.html

 Note the license agreement.

3. The attached files are all set up for  ... search. You can see the TT logo added. I set everything up. All you have to do is paste it in. More likely you'll look at the Google setup, look at what I did, and consider your own tweaks. Either way the attached is ready to roll as-is.

4. The project got me thinking. See the most recent (prototype) results at

 www.newtechusa.com/searchany.asp

Thanks for helping improve this site.

See the header for

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

More on Magazine Covers


Hi Ed,

I found the post entitled "Classic Picture" and your response interesting. I am familiar with the concept of utilizing magazine covers to gain information about the degree to which a market move is discounted by the media.

Tribe Members tend to be able to distinguish between story telling and emotional abreaction - also between informational magazine covers, and ones that reflect societal emotional abreactions - that typically accompany a release of tension, an AHA, and the end of a trend.

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

www.Turtletrader.com

Hi Ed,

You have references on your site to www.TurtleTrader.com  and visa versa ...  I found your site from [that] site and I enjoy their "free" information and audio recordings.

I resent the fact [that they charge] for their course ... [and that the author] is not [a trader].

I recommend www.turtletrader.com for the wealth of free information on that site.

FAQ does not endorse commercial products.

FYI: Edwin LeFevre, is the author of one the best books about trading, of all time, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, a story about Jesse Livermore.  LeFevre doesn't trade so much as write, mostly for the Saturday Evening Post.

You might like to take your feelings of resentment to a Tribe Meeting as an entry point.

When you find the positive intention of your resentment, you might be able to use it to guide your selection and maintenance of a support team.

Traders Trade

and Writers Write

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

Test Driven Development

Hi Ed,

A number of questions and answers on FAQ have mentioned software bugs.

One method to reduce the number of bugs in a program is to do test driven development.

Test driven development breaks the programming process into 3 steps:

1. Create a test
2. Write code that will pass the test
3. Refactor

The actual testing is done by a test engine program. Every time you compile
the code, you run the test engine. The engine runs every test that you have
written. That way, when you change something, you test not only that your
change had the effect you wanted, you also will find out if it broke some other part of your system that you weren't thinking about.

For example, if I decide that I wanted to have a function that calculated a
20 day exponential moving average, I would first write the test.

...
double TestValue =

Calculations.TwentyDayExponential(15,14);
AssertEquals(TestValue,14.9);
...

The next step would be to write the Calculations.TwentyDayExponential
function. You are done writing the function as soon as it passes the test.

Once you have a working TwentyDayExponential function, you may try and find a new way to calculate the average. You are free to monkey with the
function as much as you want, because you know that if you do something wrong, you will find it when your test fails.

Another way you may want to refactor is if you decide to also calculate a 50-day exponential moving average. One series of steps to do that is:

Make the test call a function called NDayExponential
Change the name of the Calculation function to NDayExponential

Recompile, and retest

Modify the test to pass in another parameter, 20, the number of days the
average is to calculate.

Modify the NDayExponential function to take the additional parameter.

Recompile, retest

Write a new test to calculate an NDayExponetial, this time passing 50 as the
number of days.

Modify the NDayExponential function until it passes both tests at the same
time.

There are a few books on the subject of test driven development. There are
also a number of free resources.

http://www.xprogramming.com/

OK.

Sometimes, complicated methods to eliminate bugs, wind up introducing even more of them.

Hairy proofs and derivations can indicate excessive math-turbation.

You might notice the extent to which you bury yourself in math, as a way to avoid feelings, or as a way to avoid pulling the trigger on a trade.

Elevating Math

from the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Equation for how easy it is

to eat food with chopsticks.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/

news/stories/s1041709.htm

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

Mon, 23 Feb 2004

Power Struggle

Reduce things to concepts may be a way you avoid your feelings.

You might take your feelings of wanting to avoid your feelings, into TTP as a starting point.

Struggle

can be Fred's way

to get you to experience your feelings.

Clip: http://www.wburghardt.com/

Sun, 22 Feb 2004

Celebrate Feelings & People

Dear Mr. Seykota,

As I'm working towards celebrating all my feelings ("Good" or "Bad"), I begin to wonder and feel that I want to work towards celebrating all the people (again, "Good" or "Bad") I meet in life as well.

OK.

Celebrate !

Clip: http://www.krismoffatt.com/

celebration%20copy.gif

Sat, 21 Feb 2004

Experiencing Feelings on the Fly

My intention for TTP is for it to disappear, as a passing AHA, into the fabric of life. See FAQ Home Page.

TTP seems to work best in a Tribe setting, where others can help you focus on fully experiencing your feelings.

Between meetings, Tribe Members tend to attract others who are good senders and receivers, so TTP becomes just part of life itself.

Fully experiencing feelings "on the fly" by yourself requires intention, discipline, courage, practice - since you are trying to explore areas you instinctively avoid - and you may drift into trying to fix or get rid of your feelings, rather than go with them.

Experiencing Feelings on the Fly

can be exhilarating.

Clip: http://www.libertybikes.com/images/

I%20can%20fly.jpg

Sat, 21 Feb 2004

Good 'ol Abe Had his Head

in the Right Place

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

I wonder where you think the people now running our government have their heads.

You might take your feelings about missing Abe and his philosophy to a Tribe Meeting as an entry point.

Abe Lincoln

Not much risk of him

or those like him

winning an election today.

Sat, 21 Feb 2004

FAQ does not dispense legal advice or tell you what you should do.

My layman's understanding is that non-commercial, educational and public service sites can use images from other sites if they cite the site. 

If you charge for your site, or re-sell the images, you may like to pay royalties to the copyright owners.

As a courtesy to the sites that furnish your clips, you might like to copy the images and include them on your site, rather than refer to their URL, as this does not tax their  bandwidth.

I recall one instance of a complaint about my use of images;  I post an animation of a girl jumping into a swimming pool to illustrate plunging into a market. The girl's father writes and complains about using the clip.  I promptly remove it.

To Avoid all Risk

you can use your own pictures,

and pictures of your own pictures,

and pictures of them.

Clip: http://www.eskimo.com/

Sat, 21 Feb 2004

NLP and TTP

Hello Ed,

Do you find Neural Linguistic Programming helpful in facilitating the TTP Ah-Ha experience? I have included some of the NLP linguistic forms. These forms remind me of your SVO-p rule. I find them helpful in my own internal communication and when reading text that contains excessive distortions, deletions and generalizations.

NLP is the Grinder and Bandler model of Milton Erickson's methods. 

The practice of NLP varies widely from practitioner to practitioner.

Some practitioners use NLP to avoid feelings by manipulating your neuro - logical around them.

Others use NLP to locate and experience feeling sub-modalities, such as temperature, texture, taste, etc.

TTP facilitates Fred fully sharing experience with CM.  This tends to convert "bad" feelings into "good" instruments on your emotional control panel - and tends to dissolve drama associating with trying to experience repressed feelings.

TTP seems compatible with NLP, and with other forms of personal and spiritual growth technology.

When you find the positive intention of your feelings of disgust and anger, you can use them to detect the flaws in the linguistic forms you cite.

A Positive Intention of Disgust

is to detect linguistic manipulation

Clip: www.aperfectworld.org/

emotions.htm

Fri, 20 Feb 2004

Good Question

Hi Everyone,

I answer your curiosity. The Ceiling and Floor of an integer are two types of mathematical rounding functions:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

The insight I sight from the site you cite is that Rounding refers to various Nearest Integer methods, not to Ceiling and Floor functions.

Your clients may prefer you use standard math (rather than clever inflation functions) when you report your performance.

You might take "desire to inflate" into your tribe process.

People who like to inflate

find a place at NASA

building light weight Space Reflectors

Fri, 20 Feb 2004

[My Advisor]'s Recommendation

to Contact You

Dear Ed,

I hope you can give me some advice, because I am at a very conflicting point in my trading career. I have been meeting Dr. [Name] because he has been coming to consult with me and other individual traders at a trading shop I work at in Chicago. Anyway, to get to my point .....

I have been a market maker in the E-mini S+P for two years glued to my monitors all day long from bell to bell and have done quite well for myself, but I truly believe that that is not where the real money in trading lies.

I truly believe that trend trading is the way to go. I also believe that short term trading on an intra day basis is extremely stressful and ultimately it is just a losing proposition.

I am only 23, but already I'm thinking about the longevity of my trading career as a scalper, and to be honest I think it can last only about 5 years MAX.

So I discussed with Dr. [Name] whether I should continue to scalp and learn how to trade my own money that I've made through scalping with a trend trading style, or if I should actually quit my job as a scalper and try to work for a successful hedge fund even for free if I have to so I can have a mentor to learn how to trade trends.

I don't know how much I can learn though because I truly believe that you can only learn by actually trading. I was a self taught scalper, but I still believe it helps to have mentors.

I even approached my boss about this, and he basically trashed long term trend trading systems, saying that you cannot control risk trading long term, and was very much against it.

Then I asked him, "How do you account for the success stories like yourself or John Henry." He said that they were consistent because they learned how to control risk on a intraday time frame.

He said that most of the great trend traders blew up. He told me that Richard Dennis blew up and Jesse Livermore ended his trading career with a bullet through his head because of trend trading.

Do you agree with this?

Say you buy at A and sell at B. 

Then, to make money, B has to be higher than A, so there is a trend between A and B. 

No trend, no profit.  All profitable trading is trend-trading.

If you want big profits, you want  big trends, and to trade long-term.

Your boss may have some issues about sticking with his positions and may be trying to justify his trading style.

You might refer him to this site or to a Workshop.

You might have issues thinking for yourself, preferring to look to your boss or to me for answers. 

You can take "wanting confirmation from others,"  into the process as a starting point.

 Confirmation

can be a function of commitment.

Clip: http://www.towardsthegoal.com/

images/peopleandplaces/confirmation.jpg

Fri, 20 Feb 2004

Number of Days Breakout and AHA


Hi Ed,

Thanks for your FAQ reply on "#-days breakout".

The history of confusion and final AHA goes like this.

A few years ago, I managed to get hold of [Some Rules for Trading].

Without any back-testing, I started using the complete system for my trading. A mechanical trading approach is really a new concept to me. And since I have not been successful with my pure fundamental analysis approach, I allowed myself to try it out without any testing.

The initial trading result was not good. I got whip-saw a lot, sometime after the initial position, sometime after the 2nd, 3rd or 4th additional position. The feeling of being kick-out after the 4th pyramid entry really drive me mad and fuming (I have no idea of TT at that time). I calculated that my loss per trade increases from initial 2% to 5% if I were to be stop-out after the 4th pyramid entry. I realized that this original system does not suit me. It too aggressive for me. I need to tailor it to suit my character and personality and my stomach ;)

I stop trading. I browsed through my trading diary (I kept a record of all my trades) and re-read the [system rules] many times. I had insights and aha! I noticed that those trades that were successful have certain chart pattern  like reverse-head-and-shoulder, trading range and round-saucer bottom. I suddenly realized that my interpretation of the system entry and breakout might be wrong ...

To me, the [description] is ambiguous, it causes my confusion ... it is this kind of price pattern that I got whipsaw a lot. Later I discovered that I had brought them at the top of trend. This was as much as the price could contain for the time being. And correction was due, and kick me out.

I made the following minimal changes to the turtle system:

(1) entry - use breakout from more successful chart-pattern like trading
range or reverse-head-and-shoulder. Breakout from chart-pattern that has
price trending straight slope up is ignore.

(2) adding position - position is added after a new breakout if and only if 8-days low has occurred preceding any new breakout.

(3) use end-of-day breakout instead of intra-day breakout as mentioned
by Curtis.

The new trading system really suit me well. I do not need to stare at the quote machine, I gain personal time and freedom and my account grow. My concern at that time was a quote from Richard Dennis during a interview in Market Wizard. Richard Dennis said that most of his profit derived from one or two winners and he urged his students to take all signal triggered. My worry is what happened if the winner of the year does not have the chart-pattern I am waiting for? I will miss the run up! No more profit!

The ... confusion was not solved and the worry of winner run away is ignored. My new trading system has done quite well and I intend to stick to it.

This matter re-surface when I heard [about another] trading course. I did not attend his course but I did browse through his website .. [and it has different rules].

You not only seem to want the perfect trading system, you seem to want it to appear as a definite set of rules.

Typically, sets of trading rules, such as you find in books and on internet sites are ambiguous, even internally conflicting.

Even if you could find a set of rules that you can compile into code, your program would likely guide only a sub-set of your actual trading process.

For example, essential trading tasks include selecting the markets to put on the system, determining the overall and individual portfolio risk, selling instruments to make room for more promising ones, picking  points at which to roll contracts and at which to enter a new customer, etc ...

If you notice feelings of desire for the "Holy Grail" or feelings of wanting someone else to take responsibility for your actions, you might take these into TTP.

For example, you might take the feelings you have in your stomach into TTP as a starting point.

Your Actual Trading System

is the set of feelings

you are unwilling to experience

Thu, 19 Feb 2004

Still Here - Riding Strong Trends

 

Hello Ed,

I just wanted you to know I am still here and still enjoying FAQ. I have been mostly reading FAQ lately and experiencing not asking questions.

One stock I bought, [Symbol], is doing good so far. It kind of surprised me with how fast it has moved!

Have you tried to get on any radio or Television shows promoting your method and upcoming book?

I put a picture I took of Lake Tahoe in the background of my web site. I snapped the picture the week of the October workshop. I did not realize how nice it came out until recently. My friend made it the background for his computer screen. If I do good with my trading I am going to buy a house there someday.

The site is just some links to help guide my internet use. www.universalking.com 

FAQ spreads more by listening than by talking.

I expect radio and TV to pick up on it at just the right moment of now.

Close-up of TTP Marketing Tool

TTP Spreads by Receiving Others,

not by telling them what to do.

http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/

mich/more-david/david-ear-s.jpg

Thu, 19 Feb 2004

Workshop

OK.

Thu, 19 Feb 2004

Workshop

Hi Ed,

Is it possible that you reserve a place in the workshop for me? I would like to attend but at the moment I don't have the money to pay the fee. If I couldn't raise it till April 23rd, two weeks before the beginning of the shop and not attend, I'll inform you so that you can give the place away.

See Workshop page for the procedure for reserving a place.

You might take your feelings about not having enough money into TTP as a starting point.  Concern about money can work against sticking to your system.

Rich and Poor

may both have concerns

about not having enough money.

Clip: http://members.aol.com/

Thu, 19 Feb 2004

Simulation & Testing

A simulation is an imitation.

You can program a computer to simulate your trading, by coding-in your trading method and imitating your trading over historical data.

Your actual trading may differ from your simulation due to:

Simulating Auto Crashes

can help engineers design better cars

and does not guarantee

to make you a better driver.

Clip: http://www.netcar.co.il/img2/milon/

54%20crash%20test%20simulation.jpg