John Ehlers

Is anyone a fan?

cmmichaels said:

Is anyone a fan?

Click to expand...

Not really. I think anyone going down that particular route is looking in the wrong direction. I say that having wasted rather a lot of time and money doing exactly that !

TA doesnt have to be that complex really. The aim of the game is to maximise returns and minimise drawdowns. The problem is that there's an element of randomness in the distribution of those returns, and the complexity of the TA doesnt really have a great deal of impact on that.

I use quite a complex method of determining trend, based on baysian classifiers, but some years, I'd be far better off using a simple moving average. Since I'm not imortal, and I have a limited lifespan I'll never really get to know if my method is statistically better than a simple MA, and even if I was, it would matter not a jot really as all it would prove was that the method worked better over the period observed.

Thats why I'm not a fan of overly complex TA methods. I can understand where John Ehlers is coming from, and a decade ago thats precisely where I was too, but I learned a bit about trading since (and forgot most of my university maths and stats)

I'm with Hare - went there, did that.

John Ehler never made money trading John Ehlers indicators. Even THAT never put me off.

His book is an exercise in mental masturbation. The premise is "the market moves in waves, sound moves in waves too, why not apply algorithms used in DSP (digital signal processing) to price waves and see what happens?"

It's a whacky premise for sure...

I also went down this route and found that it was of limited use for what I was trying to achieve but it still had some use. That said I know of one person who made use of it and very successfully but he had adapted Ehlers work and I couldn't quite work out in what way and he wasn't going to share it.


Paul

Interesting answers thanks for coming back, I never really used to look at indicators at all and I don't really understand 99% of what John Ehlers talks about (that's not even an exaggeration) but I've been looking at a couple of his more standard indicators and they seem to work quite well when used in combination with other things some do seem to give you a leading prediction of what is going to happen quite accurately.

Trader333 said:

I also went down this route and found that it was of limited use for what I was trying to achieve but it still had some use. That said I know of one person who made use of it and very successfully but he had adapted Ehlers work and I couldn't quite work out in what way and he wasn't going to share it.


Paul

Click to expand...

Cheers Paul, do you think that he was actually adapting the indicators I've heard of people who do that far too complicated for my brain.

I think the key like with anything is to combine it with the knowledge you have and any other techniques you've learnt but some of the indicators look like the best I've seen for giving a leading indication.

I don't quite know what he was doing but I remember him saying that Ehlers had missed an important part of his analysis which he had included.


Paul

He was a great Quarterback in his day, finally got the Superball victory towards the end of his career.

anley said:

He was a great Quarterback in his day, finally got the Superball victory towards the end of his career.

Click to expand...

That's good like Jason Kidd!