This is off topic, but I have eloped with Wolfgang, and so I will be out of touch for several days. You mustn't get the wrong idea; we haven't eloped with each other, but -- embarrassingly enough -- with new TA formulas. In the heady atmosphere of the hermetically sealed chambers in which TAINJ was held, it wasn't hard to fall in love with formulas. Wolfgang has run off with a variation of the BBB scan -- don't tell Richard this, but one of the "and"s has been replaced with an "or." But that's neither here nor there.
I've become smitten with the latest version of DNS, which was unveiled at TAINJ by D himself. Some participants were a bit shocked to find out that Dave's Newest New System (DNNS) no longer contains DNS, if that's possible. Well, that's not quite accurate; it contains it, but in an unraveled form. Yes, DNS, now fully revealed, has unraveled. Most of the elements are there, but the binary system, the package in which DNS was wrapped, has been abandoned in DNNS in favor of a step-by-step approach to indicators, including StochRSI(14), StochRSI(8,5), MACD (8,17,9), InSync, Dahl and Parabolic SAR.
I believe the unraveling of DNS has something to do with the eternal cycles of creation, with the unfolding of the universe and its subsequent falling in upon itself, but on this point I'm not entirely sure. One of the participants, Paul Beattie., a Canadian of Scottish ancestry who guided some of us through what turned out to be an Indian banquet, and who conversed with the waiters in Hindi and Urdu (honestly -- I kid you not) would probably attribute DNNS to Siva, creator and destroyer, but Wolfgang (yes, Wolfgang arrived from Germany, and he's as learned and charming in real life as he is on SI) would probably see the workings of the Hegelian dialectic. Others might blame TAINJ's steady diet of pizza and diet Pepsi. And that brings to mind a more down-to-Earth way of summing up the fundamental idea behind DNNS, or any good system, for that matter. In Richards words, quoted by Dave, it is: "You've got to go home with the same girl you brought to the dance." In other words, follow the same indicators during the course of a trade. If you're worried about the demise of DNS, don't. It's still alive and well under the capable hands of Jerry Gatto, who's put a new spin on it: Buy eight days after it rose to 8, providing that it's stayed above 5 all of the intervening days.
That other popular system, BNS, emerged from the convention pretty much unscathed, though attempts were made on its life by those eager to strip it of its parentheses. The ex-parenthetical experiments continue, however, probably even now, in some subterranean chamber at the Marriott.
Incidentally, the creator of BNS, Bill Sandusky, was revealed to be a daredevil pilot single-handedly flying a collection of state-of-the art laptop computers and technical analysis software. We occasionally had glimpses of him through the clouds, and some were even treated to a few late-night loop-the-loops with CCI(13), MACD(5,35,4), the RedLine (Red Baron?) Indicator and Standard Deviation.
Bill Riedeman tried to bring the whole show down to Earth from the very beginning, urging everyone to look at the mathematical basis for the indicators they use, starting with the simplest moving average. He said the subject could be very interesting, it we could get past the tediousness of it all. My husband joked that it's not possible to get past the tediousness of all that, but it was one of the most important lessons of TAINJ. Oftentimes, (for me, all the time, I confess) we use indicators like black boxes, running data through them without really understanding what the boxes are doing. Bill went on to explain moving averages, leaving many of us perplexed, I'm sure, but nonetheless somewhat enlightened. I must say, though, that life itself is something of a black box in the long run (yes, indeed); we push ourselves through it, never fully understanding the process. For some of us, the simplest indicator can be as confounding a mystery.
But enough of the larger questions. What about that largest question of them all: What is Richard Estes really like? Yes, I've finally met Richard. He's a Southern gentleman in every sense -- warm, charming, entertaining and brilliant. As a trader, he's beyond brilliant -- he's got something that can only be gained through much work and much experience (and a great deal of character): wisdom. It was a great pleasure to meet him, and to meet all the people he has, in effect, brought together with his eagerness to help, to teach, to guide.
The invisible hand behind the weekend -- the Adam Smith of technical analysis -- was Dave Evans. TAINJ felt as if he'd opened the state of New Jersey -- and the discipline of technical analysis -- to us as if they were his home. Well, they are his home. Again, he's someone who's warm, charming, brilliant -- and organized. We did our best to upset his schedules by drifting in and out of presentations, but he kept everything running smoothly, and treated us to an elegant poolside party, featuring a stray deer in the garden.
Thanks to everyone for an unforgettable weekend. I've made more than 50 new friends, and I'll be forever grateful.
-- Brooke (who, by the way, was not really there -- she sent a paid [and poorly, I might add] surrogate). |
