Julian, I think you answered your own question in post #1.
‘Very simple old technique’. Discipline. MM.
All boring old stuff that we know by heart. But few stick with.
95% of speculators (traders) fail. An oft quoted, but rarely substantiated statistic. Barber & Odean made a number of studies, one of which, based on brokerage records, supports this figure.
As (more?) importantly, mutual funds, the more sedentary investors that we like to poke fun at - even index linked mutual funds – the most sensible of all hands-off investing tools, have on average made around 11% per annum over the last 20 years. Your average investor in these funds has made less than half that.
Why?
They switch.
They hear of stellar mutual fund managers – and jump ship. Probably never realising that stellar gets made mega-public only AFTER they’ve hit their home run, and maybe in just the first 3 months of the year - BEFORE they regress to their mean by batting below average for the next 9 months – which is when the majority of fund hoppers have realised who is ‘hot’ and moved their funds across – just in time for less than stellar performance.
Traders do the same. They pick a tried and tested basis for consistently successful trading and hit a statistically certain flat spot – and jump ship – to the next, newest, flashiest, stellar performing system, strategy, blah blah blah. Just in time for it to… – ad infinitum.
I’ve never met Sandy and am only dimly aware of what he teaches, and even more dimly why rather than trade it himself, but it always struck me as solid, basic commonsense, which is why it probably got such short shrift from this trading community.
