my journal 2

[Yamato]

I wasn't questioning their quality, however i do question why you need so many??

From my experience, you can't sum up all the edges you can find in the market into one or few systems. Each system needs its little edge and needs to work by itself. There's one system that says it rains more in November. There's another system that says it rains more in the weekends. You make more money by keeping them separate than by building one system that bets on rain in November's weekends.

 

[Yamato]

As we all know, trading is a mental game (presuming your strategy already has a statistical edge), and with the above issues you stated which come into play during trading, other than cognitive therapy (you can condition your mind yourself with various self-help cds, books etc, and they're not all a load of ********!) i see no other way to overcome this. It's not like you haven't been trying, 13 years is testament to that. You need to look at actually dealing with your psychological issues, not just putting up a mechanical barrier between you and the market, because one day you'll climb over and undo all the good work you've done the previous weeks/months if you haven't dealt with these. This is just my take on it anyway.

Hmm, trading is a mental game? Discretionary trading is a mental game. Automated trading is not even a game. We cannot talk about trading in general, as you seem to be doing. Each time we must specify what type of trading we are talking about: automated or discretionary. Discretionary trading has discretion. Automated trading does not have discretion and therefore doesn't concern our mind. Or rather what concerns my mind is not automated trading itself, but my behaviour of switching from automated trading to discretionary trading. Automated trading properly done is not a mental game (because it does not have discretion). How do you like this definition? It must make some sense to you.

Here's a nice thread about this whole point:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=172699

Anyway, as far as your other point: I have to cure myself other than worry about my trading. That might be the case. Let's investigate further in that direction. But forget the psychiatrists. That's a waste of money. You just pay people to listen to you (and they rarely reply anything back), which I can do by writing a journal, for free.

One thing I need to state better is that I've been losing for 13 years, but only in the last year or so I have realized I was a compulsive gambler. It's not something I knew from the start. I've only realized it lately, mostly by writing on this journal.

 

[JRP2891]

Ok, that's constructive advice, and, as usual, very respectful disagreement with what I say: I can handle such criticism.

Once again, leave the my 60 systems alone, because they're perfectly fine as they are. I worked my ass off for 5 years on them, and just because I am a compulsive gambler you shouldn't summarily dismiss everything I do. Obviously I have a lot of qualities, that in some cases derive from being compulsive. I've always been compulsive in my quest to improve myself.

Regarding your suggestion for a solemn promise to the forum, I am glad you're thinking of ways to help me - I want to be helped (not by the psychiatrist - forget that), because I do want to make money, very badly. And in fact that is probably one thing that's been adding to my compulsive drive to trade - the desire to make money.

Regarding the solemn promise, though, if you go back through my 3000 posts, you will see places where I say "I am an idiot", "never again", "this is the last time". So, it won't work. Forget the solemn promises on the journal - they haven't kept me from blowing out my account five more times, live, on this very journal.

We have to find another solution. Maybe I'll mature, but I doubt it. It's as if there were a different person inside me, that takes over, once I am in front of the trading platform, and my compulsiveness is fueled by some frustration: a recurring thought of having been emotionally abused as a child and adolescent by my father, a taxi driver who was rude and didn't say goodbye when I got off the cab, etcetera. Such trivial events are enough to trigger frustration in my mind, which I escape by placing a trade. I also escape boredom by placing a trade. I pretty much recur to trading to solve every single problem in my life. Even a trade that went wrong - I try to solve that problem by placing another trade immediately thereafter ("revenge trading").

We have to find a mechanical way of keeping me from relapsing into compulsive gambling. Just like I don't keep beer or cigarettes in my house or I'd smoke them. We must find a way for me to not be able to trade - and yet I have to monitor my trading systems on a daily basis. There's also other people's money on the line. I don't have a problem with other people's accounts though. Anyway, I want to keep on trading, because it's the only hope of escaping from this bank I am working at. I don't like being an employee.

Anyway, one good first step is to only have 2500 in my account, which will be the case. I could have wired more, but I won't wire more to the account, because this way I can only trade one future (with overnight margin), the GBL basically. Actually I can trade some of the currencies as well, but I'll try to forget that.

Hmm, trading is a mental game? Discretionary trading is a mental game. Automated trading is not even a game. We cannot talk about trading in general, as you seem to be doing. Each time we must specify what type of trading we are talking about: automated or discretionary. Discretionary trading has discretion. Automated trading does not have discretion and therefore doesn't concern our mind. Or rather what concerns my mind is not automated trading itself, but my behaviour of switching from automated trading to discretionary trading. Automated trading properly done is not a mental game (because it does not have discretion). How do you like this definition? It must make some sense to you.

Here's a nice thread about this whole point:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=172699

Anyway, as far as your other point: I have to cure myself other than worry about my trading. That might be the case. Let's investigate further in that direction. But forget the psychiatrists. That's a waste of money. You just pay people to listen to you (and they rarely reply anything back), which I can do by writing a journal, for free.

One thing I need to state better is that I've been losing for 13 years, but only in the last year or so I have realized I was a compulsive gambler. It's not something I knew from the start. I've only realized it lately, mostly by writing on this journal.

My point is that until you've got your own discipline under control, it won't matter if you've got a great performing EA because your psychological issues will cause you to override it as you've stated previously.

 

[JRP2891]

From my experience, you can't sum up all the edges you can find in the market into one or few systems. Each system needs its little edge and needs to work by itself. There's one system that says it rains more in November. There's another system that says it rains more in the weekends. You make more money by keeping them separate than by building one system that bets on rain in November's weekends.

How robust are these systems though? Have they been profitable on 30 years worth of back data?

 

[Yamato]

Wow, who has 30 years of data on a 15-minute timeframe? I only could get 10 years from Disktrading.com. I don't even know if you can find 30 years of the data I need. Feel free to send me those 30 years of data, and I can tell you if they are that robust. I am trading the most liquid CME futures. On the other hand, I realize that data comes as cheap as 1500 dollars per symbol from tickdata.com so I am not going to be offended if you don't send it to me. Of course, if you do, what the OUT sample tells me might even **** me off. I tend to get pissed off by any OUT sample telling me my systems don't work. Also because I have a feeling the markets might have been different in the early 1990s or before that.

Anyway, I am like a poor artisan with no money and no means, and I make my little sculptures with scrap pieces of wood. Yeah. But I've created some pretty good-looking equity curves.

Another thing to be said is that yes, some systems may not even work, but out of those 60 systems, some are definitely good. No one can stop me from just using the best 10 or 20 of those (according to forward-testing), but I'll never get 10 or 20 excellent systems if I create only 5 from the start. Besides, I am a big fan of diversification. And since my systems don't have much of an edge, don't trade that often, I need a lot of it.

Of course, if I had one system that traded 10 times a day, and had all profitable weeks, I wouldn't bother with creating 60 of them. Yet all I could do was create systems that have all profitable years (in their large majority), as they often have several red months in a row. Now, that's much easier to handle if at the same time other systems are making money.

 

[Yamato]

My point is that until you've got your own discipline under control, it won't matter if you've got a great performing EA because your psychological issues will cause you to override it as you've stated previously.

Ok, then let's focus on how you get your discipline under control. Also through ruses, not just by sheer will power. You don't see people keeping in their house: guns, beer, sweets, cigarettes and not making use of them. You rather hear people who say "let's not keep a gun in the house, because you never know what kind of trouble you'll get into because of it...". My point is that to achieve what you and I want me to achieve, we can forget:

1) promises (as you had suggested)
2) sheer will power

And we need to look into the direction of :

1) ruses, and tactics to effectively keep myself from doing stuff, just like you don't keep beer in the house if you don't want to drink it.

For example, for a while I've been trading someone else's account with my systems and never dreamed of interfering with them. I could have, but I didn't. Of course, I wouldn't have gotten away with it. You see my point, I am sure. But we need to find other methods. This cannot be the only method.

No matter how mature and strong you are, if you've quit smoking, it is not wise to keep a pack of cigarettes in your pocket. Or to own a drugstore where you sell them. Yet, as an automated trader, I am like a former alcoholic and smoker, who owns a drugstore and has to see cigarettes every day. You get my point - I wouldn't be gambling at all if I didn't have to handle this stuff on a daily basis. I am this close to not being addicted and to quitting, but I have to find a way to still own the drugstore, yet not fall into temptation.

 

[Yamato]

The Normans

Still watching the usual documentary, A History of Britain:

It seems that these guys, the Normans, were descending from the Vikings, so basically the Saxons, once conquered Britain, started getting screwed by the Vikings from all directions, from the East by the Norse, directly from Denmark or wherever that area was, and then from the South by these other, former Vikings, the Normans. I guess the same stuff happened in Italy or even worse, but for some reason I never found my country interesting. Also because we don't have such good documentaries. The documentaries on the Romans themselves are better made in English, than by us.

http://normans.etrusia.co.uk/timeline.php

...1084
Germans attack Rome, the Norman armies drive back the Germans and save the Pope only to raid Rome themselves.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_line_of_succession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_to_the_British_Throne

Wow, this is it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs

Quite a good link, in order to watch and understand the above documentary.

 

[Yamato]

ΒattΙe οf Βritain

 

[Yamato]

Τhe Dοgs of Wαr

 

[Yamato]

http://www.letmewatchthis.com/watch-13516-Shooting-Dogs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Dogs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Rwandan_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutsi

Colonial influences
Both Germany (before World War I) and Belgium ruled the area in a colonial capacity. The Germans, like the Belgians before them, theorized that the Tutsi were originally not from sub-Saharan Africa at all. They thought that they had migrated from somewhere else. The German colonial government gave special status to the Tutsi, in part because they believed them to possess racial superiority. The Germans considered the Tutsi more 'presentable' compared to the Hutu, whom they viewed as short and homely. As a result, it became colonial policy that only Tutsis could be educated, and only Tutsis could participate in the colonial government. Since the Hutus were in the majority such policies engendered some intense hostility between the groups, who had been peaceful enough with each other before colonization. The situation was exacerbated when the Belgians assumed control following World War I. Recognizing their ignorance of this part of Africa, they sought advice from the Germans, who told them to continue promoting the Tutsis, which they did.

When the Belgians took over the colony in 1916, they felt that the colony would be better governed if they continued to classify the different populations in a hierarchical form. Belgian colonists viewed Africans in general as children who needed to be guided, but noted the Tutsi to be the ruling culture in Rwanda-Burundi. In 1959, Belgium reversed its stance and allowed the majority Hutu to assume control of the government through universal elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kings_of_Rwanda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Rwanda

Before the nineteenth century, it was believed that the Tutsis held military power while the Hutus possessed supernatural power. In this capacity, the Mwami's council of advisors (abiiru) was exclusively Hutu and held significant sway. By the mid-18th century, however, the abiiru was increasingly marginalized.

As the kings centralized their power and authority, they distributed land among individuals rather than allowing it to be passed down through lineage groups, of which many hereditary chiefs had been Hutu. Most of the chiefs appointed by the Mwamis were Tutsi. The redistribution of land, enacted between 1860 and 1895 by Mwami Rwabugiri, resulted in an imposed patronage system, under which appointed Tutsi chiefs demanded manual labor in return for the right of Hutus to occupy their land. This system left Hutus in a serf-like status with Tutsi chiefs as their feudal masters.

Under Mwami Rwabugiri, Rwanda became an expansionist state. Rwabugiri did not bother to assess the ethnic identities of conquered peoples and simply labeled all of them “Hutu”. The title “Hutu”, therefore, came to be a trans-ethnic identity associated with subjugation. While further disenfranchising Hutus socially and politically, this helped to solidify the idea that “Hutu” and “Tutsi” were socioeconomic, not ethnic, distinctions. In fact, one could kwihutura, or “shed Hutuness”, by accumulating wealth and rising through the social hierarchy.

 

[Yamato]

http://www.letmewatchthis.com/watch-637-Children-of-Men

This seems to be an intelligent one.

 

[Yamato]

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.911944,0.4875&spn=0.05,0.05&t=m&q=50.911944,0.4875
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings

 

[Yamato]

In some ways it opened my eyes, making me see my interpersonal strengths and weaknesses. If I get within a close range I tend to succeed with people. If I keep things at a superficial level I am more likely to fail. Other people are the opposite. That's why I unconsciously always stay away from superficial contacts with people, but only engage in one on one conversations and such. When it's "hi, how are you?", I just try to avoid that type of talk. When there's a chance for a meaningful conversation, then I go for it. In a sense at the office I am not a crowd pleaser, I seem to avoid everyone, especially groups, but then I am friends with almost everyone. That's because, unconsciously, I know what I am doing and I am not wasting time with things that are worthless, and where I fail (also because I don't consider them valuable). The same with these guys above. If the judoka stays one meter away from the boxer, he's at a disadvantage like me. But if he gets closer and locks him.. or whatever it's called, then things are different.

 

[Yamato]

Domesday Book

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

Fascinating, I was hearing and if I heard right it said the monks had 15 slaves or something like that. Pretty shocking.

The book can be downloaded here:
http://www.esds.ac.uk/newRegistration/domesdayDatasetDownload.asp

Ok, here's an example:

KEN 5,89
In CHATHAM Hundred
Robert Latimer holds CHATHAM from the Bishop at a revenue.
It answers for 6 sulungs. Land for 16 ploughs. In lordship 3.
33 villagers with 4 smallholders have 10 ploughs.
A church; 15 slaves; 1 mill at 32d; meadow, 20 acres;
6 fisheries at 12d; woodland, 1 pig.
Value before 1066 and later £12; now £15; however, it pays £35.
Earl Godwin held it.

It seems like all these churches disseminated everywhere didn't stop people from having slaves. It figures. Usual bull**** that even happens nowadays.

 

[Yamato]

List of dystopian films

This is a good list of movies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films

 

[Yamato]

This seems to be a good one:
http://www.letmewatchthis.com/watch-1981-Alex-Emma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318283/

Luke Wilson almost only made good movies.

 

[Yamato]

the french become english and viceversa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual-Monarchy_of_England_and_France

The English were expelled from all of the territories which they had controlled in France, with the sole exception of Calais.

This is pretty interesting stuff.

The funny thing is that they're actually talking about Henry VI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VI_of_England

Yet Henry was from the House of Plantagenet originally, so his ancestors were French, or rather Normans, who were in turn former Vikings. So what happens is that the Vikings went to France, stayed there 300 years and started speaking French, and all of sudden we're talking about the English being invaded by the French, rather than by the Normans or even the Vikings. This means more or less that where you means who you are, at least after a few hundred years. Along this line, the French-speaking Normans (former Vikings) who had controlled England for 300 years had lost touch with France so much that now they were seen as foreigners by the French and this leads to the wikipedia entry saying:

The English were expelled from all of the territories which they had controlled in France, with the sole exception of Calais.

After all, the English themselves were originally from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeln

So I guess, whenever you hear the "name of a people inhabiting a place", the term is referring to the people who've been there for the last 300 years or so.

This is not the right part, but I started looking about this stuff above after watching the documentary below:

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

I was listening to the news on NPR radio, and I realized that the present both in the news and in the markets is too slow to be interesting. On the other hand history is more interesting, both with world events and the markets. You can see trends and understand things much better several years at a time, and once everything is behind you, rather than live. Vietnam war and all that. When you're in the middle of it, it's boring and much less understandable. History is fascinating, the news are boring.

 

[Yamato]

damn, slight insomnia

Damn, another bad night of insomnia. I took the same cocktail of sleeping pills I take for emergencies, but I am pretty relaxed because I haven't missed one day of work since May, so even if I go two hours late, it won't be tragedy.

Still, I want to analyze the reasons for not sleeping because it will help me sleep better.

Some possible worries are:

1) the systems still didn't exit their drawdown. I still don't know how it's measured - i keep on getting conflicting concepts of drawdown from people. To me the drawdown is the time of the fall. To others is the time it took to get back where it was when it started the fall, and go beyond it. Anyway, the systems lost 3000 a few weeks ago, and are still hanging in that area, so by both interpretations, the drawdown is not over.

I started the systems early this time, just a few minutes ago, so that tomorrow I don't have to get at 7.30 am to start them. This can be done usually without causing problems, except on sunday night, where it will never work, because something strange happens at the midnight between Sunday and Monday.

2) Bad thoughts from the past, from having to put up with the world, unequipped for the world's abuses. I was too nice a guy, and had to deal first of all with having an asshole for a father, and my mom was like a nun, "show the other cheek" school of thought. This set up me up for an explosive personality. I could neither be like my dad, an asshole, due to the influence of my mom. But I could not be like my mom and "show the other cheek" due to the influence of my dad - i was always uncertain between the two behaviours and did neither, very insecure about what I should do. I didn't want to risk abusing other people, nor overreact, but I didn't want to get abused either - not at all. All the ensuing frustrations haunt me to this day. All the abuses I put up with play in my mind like in a movie: a long list, even after even, since I was in elementary school, pretty much. The few times I overreacted, and acted violently, it felt really good, but I was usually wrong, and also I did it out of losing control, and not because I planned it ahead. I still don't know if I don't act because i don't want to risk getting hurt or if I don't act because I don't want to risk hurting people. Probably both.

Anyway, with my dad it is still the cold war. We don't talk. He doesn't apologize for his past and present behaviour, so I don't even make any efforts to talk to him. In my mind it's like this: there's no way I'll make efforts to meet him half way, if he just keeps on showing no empathy, friendliness, anything... he just focuses on preaching and doesn't give a **** about what I have to say. So why should I talk to him.

3) We have that new colleague, nice guy - he likes me. But the room is too crowded for me. Even unconsciously I resent the fact that he's there. I am glad he likes me, because there's really a potential for hating one another, when there's so little space in that room. Three is just too much people. On top of it, the other two like to keep the door open (I guess because we're too many, and it feels too tight with the door closed), so I am letting them have their way most of the time. But this way there's people walking by, uttering their usual nonsense, and it further bothers me: "hi", "how are you", "everything all right". Why do they have to talk like that. This is nonsense. I'd rather have people saying "yo, dude". At least they're not asking me a fake question. "hi" is fine, too, I guess. But don't ask me "is everything all right", because obviously it's not, and you won't even wait to hear my answer.


Besides these frustrations, there might be these causes:

1) Just this one, because there's no others. Every once in a while, once a month, after being a good boy, I feel the need for rebellion, and this is how I do it. If I've been going to class, I need to skip it. If I've been going to work, I need to skip it, so I can feel I am free to not go if I don't want to (which is not true, but everyone does it, saying they're sick when they're not). If I've been going to sleep early, I need to go to sleep late. If I've been talking properly, I need to swear. If I've been sober, I need to get drunk. If I haven't smoked for months, I need to smoke... and so on. So, like a clock, after so many weeks of optimal behaviour, I need to break the routine, for whatever area I was doing things properly. I guess this is the same reason that lead me to blowing out my accounts once a month. That's why automated trading is the only trading possible for me, because if I can get my systems to run without interfering with them, they at least won't rebel to discipline, ever.

I can't believe I am the only one having these cycles, as no one talks about them here, and everyone seems to be a disciplined trader. I would have imagined that everyone sometimes needs to break the rules and blow out their account. But here and elsewhere it's not the case. Or maybe they all blow out their account like but they only write posts when everything goes well.