Spreadbetting and Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[InReality]

Hi

Has anyone read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books - The black swan , etc

I think he's mainly correct in his analysis.

But i'm trying to do daytrading/spreadbetting on the FTSE indices.:smart:

Is there anyone who agrees with Taleb on chance, use of maths models etc AND does daytrading/spreadbetting ?

What sort of system/logic do you use ?

 

[fifty2aces]

Which of his arguments in particular are you referring to? Higher than generally expected role of chance in life and the markets? Unpredictability of "black swans"? Mispricing of volatility/fat tail problem?

If you're talking about the role of chance, I don't think he argues that everything is random, merely that things are more random than we intuitively tend to believe. I guess the lesson here would be to realise that there will be randomness in your trading results, particularly over a short time period. Unprofitable traders will have winning streaks, and profitable traders will have losing streaks - you shouldn't just be looking at your results to assess performance, you should also be considering whether the results are likely to be sustainable and statistically significant. Your natural biases are likely to make you view winning trades as good, and losing trades as bad - you need to be more objective, and consider whether the decision was correct based on information available at the time.