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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (13018)	1/8/2002 7:43:41 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

PS: I don't think I've explained that very well, but that'll do. I get the gist of it, Mq, and I actually agree with you. Nothing is incapable of modelling or quantification and therefore predictable, including emotions which affect trading patterns. And, naturally, though imperfect, the best model at the time may very well outdo the human. We are not yet capable of doing so, and will probably be unable to do so for a long, long time. By the time we are able to do so on any kind of consistent basis, markets may not even be too relevant to human existence. The market is clearly much more complex than chess or any other game. Recall that until recently humans routinely beat chess-playing programs. Similarly, we are presently unequipped to predict the market with any degree of accuracy. This will change. Which brings up a really interesting point implicit in your post. What would a market look like if utterly accurate predictive tools were to be universally available? Theoretically, I suppose that it would be the end of investment and speculation--everyone would know the ultimate result of every trade, and every player would attempt to maximize his return, a fact which would skew all trades in favor of the one investment which would lead to the greatest profit. Since everyone would be compelled by cold rationality to make the same maximally-profitable investment, huge anomalies would be created which, in turn, could create other opportunities that might actually be more profitable than the original maximum profit investment. And I assume that the cycle would then chaotically repeat itself as that investment was made. As maximally profitable investments and deals would be in short supply, I suppose the really smart people would be the ones who were not in pursuit of the maximally profitable deal but were instead maximally moderate. I suppose the fly in the ointment in the discussion is that no one would make an utterly accurate predictive tool universally available. Like the philosopher's stone, it would be guarded and hoarded in order to extract maximum advantage from it. Anyway, enough of science fiction. What predictive tool were you using when you invested in Q in the early days? Still have any of that mojo left you'd like to share? <vbg>