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Strategies & Market Trends : Systems, Strategies and Resources for Trading Futures -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (37116)	10/16/1999 11:55:00 PM
From: Patrick Slevin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

< Any one else have any thoughts on this?> In addition to what I've already mentioned, I think the only caveat here is the fact that people won't be able to do this in Real Life. It's impossible to turn around and think that you can drop $50K on a trade and just double up to make it back when you have been taken out of 20% of your equity. Real Life isn't so kind. It's a good thing to get the experience trying to peg moves hither and fro, but it's unrealistic to chase moves with doubling up except for all but the most accomplished traders. I notice some of the contestants aren't trying to do that, yet they are unsuccessful both day traders and position traders. Yet those are the more realistic results. You are a reasonable person, for example. You aren't in a pit, so you would not chance 20 or so contracts on a one point move giving back half on slippage and vig. More power to you for being able to do it in the Contest, but neither you nor I or even Nemer would try to do that outside of a pit unless we had gone completely nuts.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (37116)	10/17/1999 12:54:00 AM
From: Gersh Avery	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

There's been a lot I've been learning during this contest. While I've been trading off and on for several years, I've never tried my hand at futures. All of the swings in the market I've been watching and working have been with options. Trading options seems to be much more difficult than futures. Perhaps that's because of my bearish tendencies and the coincidental timing of the open of the contest. I'm used to working with much more leverage than here. As a result, when the trade goes against me I have the good fortune to be able to wait for it to come back to me. If I'm doing well, then I'll be able to perceive the time when I should leave myself long overnight instead of short. As for the contest .. is there any other way to compete? My failure to move over into real money has to do with my urge to increase leverage. The leverage settings set up as rules by the contest are much higher than I have in real life. Because of that I've suffered losses by getting stopped out before the market turns in my direction. As I said .. valuable lessons I'm learning here. It seems to me that to do the transition to real money for me will be to use a similar leverage model or even more buffering than here in the contest .. Anyway .. some thoughts .. Another thought .. Soon I'll be shifting over to a time delayed trade. There are a couple of folks that are interested in receiving my trades before I post them on line. So what I'll be doing is a five minuet delayed post. This might alter the results that I get in the contest and will probably slow down the number of trades that I do. ...

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (37116)	10/17/1999 7:23:00 AM
From: Arik T.G.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

GZ, >>if each of us learns a lesson or two about ourselves as a result of our trading in this contest, then everyone will be a winner in real life.... Oh, I agree. I entered this contest with learning in mind, and in the short duration since its inception I already learned a lot and improved on my poor trading skills. One of my bigger character flaws that hindered my trading was dealing with closing losing trades. That kind of mistake sent me to last place in the first days of the game. That was a lesson very quickly learnt, and the positive reinforcements of the losing trades I did close in time later on intensified the learning. Another fault, one more difficult to conquer, is my lack of discipline, in the meaning following my own advice. I still have to learn not to be thrown off my game plan (shoulda been short continuously from around 1300 had I followed my own advice). Staying too close to the screens never helped my trading, and I have to learn to adhere to my game plan as long as the market agrees with it. I would like to extend my thanks to the creators of the game, this is both learning and fun. ATG

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (37116)	10/18/1999 10:11:00 AM
From: Tom Trader	Respond to of 44573

GZ, I tried to post this response on Saturday and I kept getting the message that your post did not exist. Hope I have better luck today. My goals in participating in this contest were to test out a new position trading system and a day trading system that I am already using for real time trading. I was also seeking to test out a money management approach in the contest. I wanted to do it in a way that would simulate what I would do if I were trading for real. The position trades for the contest, as I posted to Pat, got messed up -- the day trading takes too much time to post and do it for real. I think that this contest serves several useful purposes -- though to get the maximum benefit from it, IMO, it has to bear some resemblance to what one would do if one were trading for real. For a start, going long or short 30 contracts in one go for real, would entail significant slippage, I would suspect -- I don't know for sure, since I have never traded those sort of numbers. Besides, I am not sure that one would margin oneself to the extent that would be entail if one were doing it for real. It is still early in the contest, but it is interesting that Scott who has traded relatively few contracts was in second place as of Friday morning -- primarily position trading. Gersh's performance and nimbleness has been amazing -- though I suspect that slippage would have impacted him a lot more than the 1/2 point per round turn in real trading especially given the size of his trades. I do agree with you that it can be a learning experience with regard to several facets of trading -- ranging from money management to using stops. But ultimately, there is that hurdle one has to overcome -- the difference between making and losing funny money versus the real thing. I am glad that you and several other experienced traders are taking part -- it makes the contest more of a learning experience. As far as the contest is concerned, I am glad that you are enjoying it -- but although I may have had some small role in putting it together with David, he was the main player and as far as the record keeping is concerned, all the credit belongs to him. I know that I would never be able to handle that part of it -- or at least if I tried, I suspect that the contest would come to a rapid halt with my screw-ups. Hope that the hurricane did not affect you too badly -- and that you were able to stick to the Atkins diet amidst all of the commotion -- though your shopping list for emergency supplies did not sound very compliant with the Atkins program. Anyway, that's it for SI today -- I am caught up on most of my responses, I think. Have a good weekend Edit: I have read most of the responses to your post and I can see that people have varying goals as far as why they are taking part in the contest -- and there is nothing wrong with that. I have already stated what I am seeking to achieve. In fact the long trade that I entered today -- which I was trying to enter on Friday and missed the deadline -- is based on an observation that I have made and shared with several people on SI, that a tradeable bottom/top of sorts is invariably made within 1-2% of the point where my system goes flat. My system went flat at 1280 -- and so a bottom is overdue since the low so far has been a shade over 2% in excess of the 1280 level. If this does not hold true, then I must assume that this decline is not the norm. This is the type of concept that I am using the contest to test -- there are a couple of others -- and then there is the new system that I mentioned previously.