[RobGiles]

Hi Julian,
Saw your post and found it interesting. Haven’t looked at Said’s spreadsheet, so with that caveat I wanted to pose the following question:

If you’ve allocated a sum of capital, let’s say $100k to a system, but it only utilised 60% of your allocated cash max, how were you to know that at the time that 60% was t be the max cash allocated? The decision in real time you’d have been faced with would be ‘I’ve still got $40k cash allocated to strategy A that I’d love to shove into strategy B, but what if A gives me enough buy signals tomorrow that would result in the residual $40k being absorbed (and therefore unavailable for further allocation too further strategies)?’ The only way that I could see you getting around that conundrum would be to use the equity from existing positions in strategy A to allocate to B via margin loans or the leverage available in IB (same thing really). apologies if this has already been addressed somewhere else in the forum.

[RobGiles]

Ok, thanks for that clarification Nick

[RobGiles]

Hi Julien

Thanks for that. Don’t get me wrong, I want to trade these shorter term systems (the longer term time frame of short term), but I want to understand what our edge is, especially if, as you say, we are competing with ‘hedge funds and banks with masses of computing power’. We’re still playing the same game as these bigger boys. Maybe we are just exploiting the same edge and because we are by trade size comparison, minute, it doesn’t matter if we are trying to exploit the same edge?

Don’t know, just trying to get my head around it.

[RobGiles]

Now in week #5, up to Module #9, after re-working the exercises with some help from Craig in Module #8. Starting to get the hang of it, in fact its quite addictive! I can’t help myself from jumping the gun as in my “spare time” I’m reading as many books as I can get my hands on about different systems. Still trying to work out what I actually want to trade. I know I need a) a long term capital investment system that can be applied to any stock market or ETFs (no doubt some kind of trend following approach, where returns will be compounded), and b) a shorter term, swing trading style with more aggressive objectives to be traded with a smaller amount of capital (income generation). Anyway, maybe you guys might be able to help me brainstorm on that front when I get to that part of the course. All I know at this stage is the simpler, the better.

Oh yeah, I’ve also documented my beliefs about trading and markets, what these beliefs get me into and what they get me out of and whether or not they’re useful. Quite a useful exercise to get an appreciation of what I think will work for me down the track.

[RobGiles]

Hi Nick…..at the risk of sounding like I’m telling you how to suck eggs, are you running a short term (e.g. 30 days) index filter with this system ? looks like a bull market only system and one that’s left alone in short term bear or sideways markets??

[RobGiles]

Great idea….or it could be a positive expectancy system that one can’t trade simply because it doesn’t fit their beliefs, risk tolerance or psychology generally….but the next guy might gel with it

[RobGiles]

are the snippets available after the 6 months is up?

[RobGiles]

thanks for the support guys…appreciate it.

[RobGiles]

g’day Kevin & thanks. I grew up in the pumping metropolis of Youngs Siding…the old man bred angus cattle. I was the regional manager for the AWB I Katanning straight out of uni, so we’ve probably met! Give us a call next time your in Perth.

[RobGiles]

Hi Maurice

The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douglas was actualy the first trading book I ever read. It was recommended to me by my technical analysis “mentor” (a younger guy who I worked with at Colly Cotton who was a real student of the market). Awesome book. The Tharp course just takes it way deeper and gives you tasks to do, but it does get a bit out there, and yes, the Tharp stuff is getting expensive. Happy to chat with you about it. robgiles6000 is my skype ID.

cheers
Rob

[Author]

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