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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Apakhabar who wrote (14399)	10/11/2001 6:11:33 AM
From: catman	Respond to of 18137

Apakhabar.... Unlike becoming a great chef or composer, trying to succeed as a trader can be a very expensive proposition. And if you run out of trading capital, that is essentially the end of your career. A chef can work for others and a composer can continue to write and compose with the hope of future success. But where and how did they start? Did they start out being great? If I were already a great trader, I would be too busy making "great" trades to read.....so I can understand why they might not buy certain books....but how did they start? Did they read about Dow Theory or Gann? No chef or composer or trader for that matter can claim their work is truly original...I think the only one's who can truly claim originality might have been Adam and Eve..... Everything from that point on has been merely a variation on a theme... Not everyone is destined to be a great chef, or composer, or trader.....What makes them great is how they have used the knowledge and information previously set forth by others and uses that knowledge and expands and improves it to suit his/her individuality.....Just my opinion. Scott

To: Apakhabar who wrote (14399)	10/11/2001 7:05:00 AM
From: Threei	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Apakhabar, your post (very concise and truly appealing to me) essentially spells: trading is an art or mix of art and science, but not just exact science. Can only agree with you there. Vadym

To: Apakhabar who wrote (14399)	10/11/2001 10:36:26 PM
From: Dan Duchardt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Apakhabar, Composers don't read books that teach you how to write a song or a symphony. They simply listen to music and their mind processes it and either it helps them or it falls on deaf ears. It's a mysterious process, not a scientific one. Not to argue against your general theme, but on this point I think you are quite mistaken. As in many fields there geniuses who seem to be able to skip the formal education, but many (probably the vast majority) of composers are well grounded in music theory with an excellent understanding of the technical foundations of "music". And yeah, they got a lot of that from reading books. From what I hear, even many tattoo artists these days are formally trained artists building on their classic art background to create in their chosen medium (one that pays them to ply their craft). Dan

To: Apakhabar who wrote (14399)	10/13/2001 1:10:37 PM
From: MKT_entropy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18137

Prompted by several excellent opinions of Mark Davis' book 'Trading in the Zone' by posters whose opinion I value and often organically agree with, I bought it a few days ago from AMZN and started reading. I'm not too far yet, maybe 30 pages, and perhaps I should not attempt to voice my first impressions so early, but as they say, you only have one chance to make a good first impression--and that impression is anything but good. The author sounds like a home-grown pop psychologist to the stars, a la Mr. Simmons. His knowledge of child psychology and his 'unique' terminology would not be mistaken for the real thing by any serious practitioner in the field. And this paragraph (Ch. 2, p.24, second paragraph): " ... Scientific researchers have found tears to be composed of negatively charged ions. If allowed to take its natural course,, crying will expel the negatively charged energy in our minds and bring us back to a state of balance..." posed to me a true dilemma: is it worth my time to read further such BS? What was he smoking when he wrote that? Where was his editor and fact-checker? Perhaps this should not be surprising (but immediately put me on notice), since the author early on says that after failing in 1982 as a trader (p. xiii), he started advising others on how to become successful traders, and quite obviously has no formal training in psychology nor familiarity with its methods and terminology. I do not question that his pop approach to building self-confidence may work well for those who don't have it in the first place and can't think critically themselves, but as a trained researcher, born skeptic and a person very resistant to simplistic, cult-oriented movements and approaches, I'm greatly disappointed. I am also not saying that everything he writes makes no sense--some things do, but how is a reader to know what in this strange mix to pick and what to overlook? At least Alan's book, although hastily edited and written in a heavy, repetitive and invocative style, sticks to logical arguments and does not stray into areas the author has no expertise in. But this is a different subject. If this early opinion changes after reading the whole oeuvre, I'll let you know--if you're interested at all... Finally, I wanted to thank the posters again for many interesting and thought-provoking opinions; now back to my regular lurking mode--and the Zone... M_e