J. Christoph Amberger

[Mr. Charts]

I've heard several of these "tips" before, but then I've been around trading since the early 90s so that's not surprising.
The truths that last are those which are either true or myths. Some could even say myths are their own truths. Perhaps "truth" itself is derived from "true" and "myth".
OMG, I'd better stop now before I write any more drivel. This is what comes of coming back from holiday raring to trade and the market is closed for Labor (sic) Day.

 

[megamuel]

Good thread.... Cheers Bramble!

 

[BSD]

Momentum traders are correct most of the time but wrong during turning points.








Note from TheBramble: Another genuine LOL. This belongs with the Contrarian rule and is as self evident as it is obvious. But then I realised the zebra is two colours.

Never catch a falling knife.









Note from TheBramble: Yeah, often pithily quoted, but very few realise they they're doing it - until they've done it. An advance of experience brings you to realise that you are doing it. Until finally, you recognise that you have done it, and know what to do/not to do to not do it again.

Contrarians are correct at turning points in the market, but wrong the rest of the time.

Great stuff Tony !

That's trading in a nutshell.

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Great stuff Tony !

That's trading in a nutshell.

Maybe so; enlightening and entertaining. But how does it help in a practical sense?

 

[BSD]

Valid point Monty.

Should explain where I'm coming from.

I'm a big picture guy, when going after objectives I try to isolate the truly success relevant factors from irrelevant noise, I try to figure out what the almost inevitably 20% of input is that's going to generate 80% of the output.

To me markets don't hold any secrets or arcane holy grails waiting to be discovered, nor are they conducted by a great invisible conductor only a selected few are privy to after years of wading through the nitty-gritty.

Nope.

To me markets are nothing more than the sum of their participants actions.

Which in effect also makes them unpredictable, as all it takes throwing your clever analysis overboard is Mr. Soros holding an opposing view on markets and putting his money where his mouth is.

Good thing is we don't need to predict to make money any more in trading than a casino needs to as long as we both have a small edge.

Now we're getting to the point why those quotes from Tony are imo also the key to making money trading.

Markets never go straight up or straight down.

What they do is move in a never-ending cycle between overbought and oversold waves.

Which really only leaves us with two methods to make money trading directionally:

Tony's quote of Momentum or trend trading, where you have the choice between buying breakouts or waiting for pullbacks on the one hand.

OR his quote of being a contrarian and trading reversions to the mean, picking tops and bottoms on the other.

Realize that, pick your choice based on personal preference and what suits your psychology better, and that at the end of the day is really all you need next to good money management and the ability to live with the realization that being wrong is an inescapable part of doing business as a trader in order to succeed.

 

[pedro01]

In the back pages of the Economist you will find the Big Mac index and GDP growth figures. Find the country with the most undervalued currency and the highest GDP growth. Buy it.

Not sure about that - it takes deep pockets to buy a whole country.

 

[BSD]

Going buying countries ?

Heck why not then.

"ExxonMobil buys Iceland for President Bush

IRVING, TX — One day after breaking its own record for the biggest U.S. quarterly profit ever, ExxonMobil Corporation (motto: Cheap Gas or Clean Restrooms — Make Up Your Mind!) announced it is buying the country of Iceland and giving it to President George W. Bush in appreciation for all he’s done for the company during the last eight years. “We got Iceland for less than you might expect,” said ExxonMobil spokesperson Phil Rupp. “With their recent financial problems, the Icelandic government was willing to let it go for $10 billion in cash, a year’s supply of gas and front-row seats to a Jonas Brothers concert. Oh, and we had to take Bjork off their hands.”

President Bush has hinted recently that he’s planning to sell his ranch in Crawford, Texas, after leaving the White House and is looking for another weekend getaway spot. He was initially disappointed when he heard about Iceland. “Isn’t that the state Sarah Palin’s from?” he asked Rupp. Mr. Bush warmed up to Iceland after hearing that the island’s recent financial crisis has crippled the country’s logging industry, giving him over 100,000 acres of brush to clear. The departing government also promised Mr. Bush it would change all of the country’s polysyllabic unpronounceable Norse city names to Lars.

Vice President Dick Cheney was visibly upset when he heard about the gift, since not only was he the real driving force behind ExxonMobil’s tax breaks, he’s the only member of the Bush administration who’s ever used an Exxon restroom. Cheney spends a few days every month in one near Washington since, as he puts it, “Even Osama bin Laden wouldn’t follow me in there.” Just as the vice president was picking up the phone to invite ExxonMobil’s CEO on a hunting trip, Phil Rupp was ushered into his office to present him with the keys to the Exxon Cheney, a 4,000-foot-long oil tanker the company is converting into the world’s largest bass boat."

ExxonMobil buys Iceland for President Bush

 

[pedro01]

LOL !!! Brilliant stuff...

 

[TheBramble]

I dunno. This is one of the things that depress me about this site. Not the quotes that I’ve cut & pasted (and commented upon in some cases), but the almost complete lack of response.

These aren’t edicts from on high – they are simply the outputs of one individual’s mind. A trader. Quite possibly. But how many here are also traders?

Surely one, or more, have a view at odds or even in agreement with those quotes posted?

Where is the cut and thrust of today’s trading good & great?

A lot of JCA’s comments are pure ****e – yet no robust defences or attacks? So far. Is it that nobody is reading them or that nobody is thinking about what is being said?

 

[TheBramble]

Apologies to those that have responded thoughtfully and sensibly and I’ll not embarrass you by being specific.

But surely there’s more than that out there actually doing this stuff every day? Surely?

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Bramble,

Maybe some of us (who were enjoying this thread) thought that you yourself had become bored with it and gone off to do something else. Or maybe you were just holidaying in Monte Carlo, or Herne Bay, or wherever it is that you rich trader types go to unwind.

Well you did say that you had no ego invested in Mr Amberger's aphorisms.

I notice that you seemed to pick out some as worthy of further discussion (meriting threads of their own), e.g.

"There is no correlation between consumer confidence and the stock market."

There was another one about the stock market being a leading indicator of the economy.

Well the stock market is (or was; it could have melted down while my back was turned) "recovering", but most people don't seem to think the real economy is recovering yet.