my journal 2

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We will have to agree to disagree because I disagree with practically everything you say here.

I want to earn money as a discretionary trader and I am 99.9% positive that I'm not going to manage it without great discipline.

The fat guy is fat because he wants that food more than you. If you wanted the food as bad as him, you would just go to the shop to get the food. There won't be many fat people that you could get to slim down just by keeping their fridges empty.

You talk about finding a recipe for doing discretionary trading. All the methods of discretionary trading I've ever come across require discipline though to stick to the plan. I think what you are talking about is finding a recipe to do discretionary trading by circumventing the need for discipline.

Despite what you say, I think you are experienced enough in the markets to put together plans for a dozen different discretionary traders. But you don't have a recipe to make trade after trade according to your discretionary rules without messing up.

I don't say it's impossible to find such a recipe, I'm just saying that's not what I'm going to do, I'm going to try using discipline to apply my strategy, and every time I get it wrong I'm going to examine exactly why I did it wrong and I'll isolate the issues causing it and learn a way of dealing with them. Presumably by putting myself outside my "comfort zone" and training myself to accept unpleasant situations and act according to my plan rather than according to my wishes, I can succeed, i.e. by applying discipline.

If you find a way of getting around that process then not only will you make yourself wealthy by trading, but you'll also be able to sell millions of books or training courses and so forth.

I think the whole disagreement is about semantics. Yes, also we might have had different lives and see things differently, but a lot of the disagreement comes from what we mean by "discipline". I maintain my points, and i am ok with disagreeing, but probably we only partly disagree and partly call the same things with different terms.

00:01:02 # All we need #
00:01:05 # Is an afternoon of skipping through the mind #
00:01:10 # And I know we'll find #
00:01:16 # We're two of a kind #
http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Fast+Track
http://www.markmcadam.com/audio/LittleGameREmast_hifi.mp3
 
last remaining energies

I spent my last few energies on the Silver future and came up with another good system on it, which might also work on gold and copper. Total is now at 79 and probably soon to 81 (if it works on the other two).

I might be able to bring my total of automated and forward-tested systems to 90.

Just have another few days to go, and I will be done. Probably by the end of next week I will be done with all back-testing. Then comes the hardest part - automation. This part is hard in terms of creativity, whereas that part will be hard in terms of amount of work to do.
 
learning about the underlying assets of my futures

I realized that I didn't even know what copper was, so before testing systems on it, i looked for some videos on it. I will find more on silver and gold, later. Here's the metals on cme.com:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/

Here's some links on the history of futures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract#Origin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales#Business

Here's the first fascinating video I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmaGh4g1JtY


While I studied this stuff, I realized that measuring metals (let alone all the other futures) is an intricate mess of units of measurement. For metals the mess consists primarily of (regular) pounds and troy ounces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_ounce

So I was thinking to myself: "these ****ing americans and british and their units of measurement...". But then I read on it, and the irony is that the British took these units of measurement from the Romans, both pounds (libra) and ounces (uncia). It's really interesting that the first peoples to adopt a unit of measurement are the ones who leave it first, and the last guys to adopt it are those leaving it last. The Romans passed it to the British, then the British passed it to the Americans, and those mother ****ers still don't want to drop them in favor of the metric system.

Here's more useful links on this goddamn units of measurement mess:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_units_of_measurement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_ounce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight
There are 12 troy ounces per troy pound,[2] rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system.

What makes this thing a mess is that whereas the entire world adopted the metric system, futures and their underlying assets still did not, and the consequence is that now I have to deal with this mess. I have to do it at least superficially, to have a vague idea of what I am dealing with. Even though I could go on ignoring what I am building systems on - but it would not be safe.

Ok, recapitulating, what I understood so far is that gold and silver are measured and quoted in troy ounces. Here's a good link:
http://www.goldprice.org/gold-price.html

So... basically when I hear that gold is at 1500 and silver at 47, this means the cost of one troy ounce of those metals. This gold/silver ratio chart confirms my idea:

20080211c1.jpg


Now, for copper, it's different and this mother ****er is measured in pounds, and - mind you - not troy pounds, but regular pounds. So, when I hear that copper costs 4.4, that is the USD price for one pound.

Anyway, on to gold videos:


Wrong documentary, as it mostly talks about the spanish conquest of the americas. Fascinating but not what I was looking for.

I got sidetracked by the colonization of the americas, and now I am studying this subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples


Now something on gold/silver ratio history:


This guy talks too fast and it's unnerving, but the content is good.
 
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81 systems

Pretty good. I was able to implement 3 more Volatility Breakout systems on the three metals futures I have. Now, adding the other 4 I created on NQ, my total goes from the initial 74 to the present 81. Some more work ahead, but the total will most likely get to 90.
 
Watching The Machinist right now:
http://www.putlocker.com/file/1QUX51S5LO9W0O48


It reminds me... a mix between taxi driver and the shining.


This is my top choice, the type of movies I like. They really make me escape from reality. I feel like I am on drugs. My reality is no good right now. It's never been good.

Christian Bale is a great actor.
 
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I can't believe this movie stayed unknown:
http://stagevu.com/video/hjagdneprfor

Thinking back to it (I watched it a week ago), it is an excellent one.

I am not a movie critic, but I can say this much: the acting is not the best part (except by Braff, Grodin and Bateman, which are excellent as always - and Bateman is the best one). The quality of the movie derives from the plot and the directing. It's a modest low-key understated movie, which delivers more than it promises.

Nothing to do with Office Space, which, compared to it, is a masterpiece. But better than any movie with tom cruise. There's more intelligence in this movie than in all of tom cruise's and nicole kidman's movies put together.
 
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I've watched prince of persia twice this weekend, gemma arterton gets me hot n' bothered, but seriously it's like , better than gladiator, i recommend it!

Pity it's not looking likely that there'll be a sequel given it didn't profit much, but it was based on a videogame trilogy so it's always possible :)
 
latest thoughts

The first thought is that I have now fully realized that there are out there a great number of great movies that do not become famous. It's almost as if some movies were "too good to become successful".

For example, "happy accidents" is one of them. Did we ever hear of it? Nope.

And "Being there"? My second most favorite movie, by Hal Ashby. Yet few people know about it.

So now I am certain about it. You have to dig to find the good unknown movies. I also suspect that this is due to the fact that, whereas the movies made each year are increasing, the number of oscars and the number of movies remembered each year is always the same. Each year only 10 movies are remembered or even talked about.

Another thought is that as my systems increase, I now feel the urge to create new categories to classify them. Indeed right now I no longer have just one WITH ID TREND strategy, but several families. I need sub-categories that classify this large number of systems (approaching 100) and prevent me from getting lost.
 
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91 systems back-tested and found profitable. I can't go any further for today. Their total will definitely reach 100.

[...]

I'll take a break until next weekend, because my mind can't take more of this without burning out. There's a risk of pushing myself too hard and jeopardizing future performance, and no need to take that risk.

I'm gonna watch movies from this endless lists:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt.php

Starting with best of rotten tomatoes. Later I'll go down those other lists.

But right now I am looking at this fascinating web site with a lot of jail statistics:
http://www.mcso.org/Mugshot/
 
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latest thoughts

self-censorship

First of all, as I've written before, I need to make the premise that lately I've been engaging in a wider self-censorship and have been blocking out from this journal a good 33% of my thoughts. It sucks but I have to do it for various reasons, which I cannot mention.

Having said that, here's my latest thoughts.


hot water not running and sore throat

The hot water is not working any more and for various reasons it might not be fixed for a whole month. Or for a whole 3 months even. As a consequence of that, I've skipped work today, due to a sore throat from taking cold showers every day. It really sucks, but it's beyond my control. Now it's almost gone, but tomorrow another cold shower awaits me. Let's not start complaining by getting into the details.


mini-vacation is over

Tomorrow I will go, but I will be late probably. It will be a mini-vacation I took (2 days off, one day of vacation and one day of sickness, yesterday). I was pissed at my colleagues anyway, so it serves them right.

I am having some problems with falling asleep so I'll write here for a while.

pissed at many people for various reasons

Right now I am mad at various people, for various reasons. And all these mother ****ers put together are the reason I am awake right now and can't fall asleep.

steady progress with new systems

I've kept working on silver, copper and nasdaq systems, also sometimes finding new systems for existing futures, and today I brought my total of forward-tested systems to 95. It's a pleasure seeing my systems grow like this, and it's a pleasure trading my systems and seeing their live trades (with real money) on a daily basis. I feel like I am making things happen.

Probably the total will exceed 100 in a few days. 74 systems were producing about 12 trades per day. From now on, I will be seeing about 16 trades per day.

self-congratulations

It's a pleasure that my order and neatness make this possible. I don't know anyone, except maybe librarians, who could cram 100 systems into one excel workbook and make them work properly and without confusing the trades of one system with the trades of another.

movies

I've been watching... over 10 movies in the last few days. All great ones. I've gotten a good sense of picking movies. And I am not just saying the top 100 movies of all time, because those are always easy to pick. But, once you've seen the godfather, taxi driver and all those other 100 great movies, you need to expand and look for the other hundreds of good movies that were made, and that's when it gets harder. But it is still possible to get a good feel for it, by focusing on actors and directors. Some actors tend to star in commercial worthless movies, others star in commercial good movies, others star non-commercial crappy movies, and others star in non-commercial good movies. The same applies to directors. And this changes decade after decade.

For example, De Niro used to star in both commercial good and non-commercial good. So he took part in masterpieces. Now it changed and De Niro increased the commercial movies he was part of, and some of them weren't even good (such as Heat and many others he made in the 1990s and 2000s).

Di Caprio is a similar actor and so is Johnny Depp. They star in both commercial and non-commercial movies, and generally they are good. Of De Niro, Di Caprio and Depp, I am not sure which one chose the worst movies to be in, but they all picked some bad ones and some excellent ones.

Another example is Tom Cruise: almost 100% of the movies he makes are commercial and almost 100% are crap. The same applies to Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and that type of actor. George Clooney is a little different and occasionally he picks a good movie to star in. But he also has a tendency for commercial crap. The same applies to Harrison Ford. Bruce Willis is the same type of commercial actor, but a little better at choosing movies he's in. But still commercial stuff with little ambition for art. Pretty much the same for Nicolas Cage, who's a great actor, but picks bad commercial movies most of the time, or at least half of the time (which is disappointing). Johnny Depp is exactly at the threshold between commercial and non-commercial. A bit better than Nicolas Cage. I would say that they're both on our side, on my side, on the side of art. More so for Johnny Depp, by very little distance.

An actor that does not pick commercial crap is vince gallo, but then his movies are usually non-commercial crap, but they are better because at least they're original.

Then we have one of the few exceptions: Adam Sandler. An example that you can make commercial movies and good ones at the same time. His romantic comedies are good art work and yet commercial at the same time. They're looking for big audiences.

An example of how actors and directors changed in the years is De Niro and Scorsese and Pacino, too. De Niro used to never pick a bad movie to act in, and now things have changed. Scorsese, after Goodfellas but even a bit earlier, started directing commercial crap. Pacino, too, after the 1980s, made some poor choices in terms of art (not in terms of money or similar).

Actors that tend to be in good movies all the time are: Woody Harrelson, Jim Carrey, Matt Dillon, Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson.

For directors things are different. If you can make one excellent movie, then usually you tend to make a lot of other excellent ones, and viceversa. Two perfect and opposite examples.

Total commercial crap by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Emmerich

Total art by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Judge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrelly_Brothers

Another simple example is Samuel Jackson. Making great movies with great acting until he became successful with Pulp Fiction. Then mostly commercial crap.

I will now go back up, read what I wrote and add red titles for each section.
 
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Woke up, didn't sleep enough, will have to take a cold shower, and will have to go to work. I am experiencing... poverty. The need to have a series of masters to obey to, the need to accept unpleasant situations, all due to lack of money.

For now my usual "screw them all" is postponed, due to lack of money. For now it's just "screw me now" in order to avoid being screwed even more later. It's "screw my present" in order to not screw my future.

The only thing cheering me up is this song that I am playing:
http://www.markmcadam.com/audio/LittleGameREmast_hifi.mp3
 
Tonight I might sleep. I've created yet another 3 systems and now I am at 98 systems. It feels good.

Tonight I'll sleep because I am dead tired from today, having slept only 6 hours.
 
Hey, Ive only read the last few pages, but why so many systems?

Three movies outside the mainstream I think are great and always recommend.......Gattaca, American History X and Apt Pupil.
 
I watched the American History X one. I will watch the other two:
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-2974-Gattaca
http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-2530-Apt-Pupil

Maybe even within this week.

Regarding the systems, I need many because each one does a small thing. Each one has a small edge and the drawdown is sometimes lasting up to one year. So I need many of them.

I found that my efforts are better spent building ten pretty good systems, than trying to build one excellent system, which, even if it were possible, would perform worse than those 10 "pretty good" ones.
 
Sleepless

Unbelievable. Sleepless for the second night in a row.

I've lost some worries and gained others. Lost my hate for co-workers (for now). Kept hate for others, and related worries.

I will write for a while, whatever comes to mind. I've always wanted to be a writer.

I can't create more systems because it would be really too much and I'd have to skip work as a consequence.

I am not feeling good at all, as a consequence of the cold showers. I wont' get into that either. No hot water and all that. Let's drop it.

I'm gonna talk about this documentary I saw, about the violence in Brazil, by police and people in general. Yeah, out there you can just kill people if you're a policeman. That movies was called "bus 176" or similar.

I found it on the rotten tomatoes best movies list. Very good values in that movie. That is why it was on top of this list:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt_year.php

I will watch all of them, being that list so reliable. Another one I had watched and mentioned is that other documentary, Man on Wire.

It's easy for a film based on a true story, as it is for a documentary, to be remembered years later. They are not entertainment. It's like research. I am surprised there aren't more of them, because it doesn't seem that much harder than a regular movie, and yet you have a higher chance of succeeding.

And also, if you're going to risk failure and a flop, would you rather fail while trying to make a documentary (which is almost impossible) or fail while trying to make Pretty Woman? Actually I'd rather fail at a documentary than succeed at making Pretty Woman or Top Gun for example.

What's next?

Yeah, that's what I am doing here, actually. A diary is like a documentary on your life and thoughts. I was never good at creating fiction nor good at appreciating it. Even though my favorite book is the catcher in the rye, which is fiction.

What do I write next? I gotta fall asleep.

Maybe I'll watch a boring documentary. But I am tense, that's the problem. I am always tense. That's why I can't fall asleep.

Might watch this now:


Winter in Yellowstone.
Minus 40 degrees.
Fahrenheit or centigrade, it doesn't really matter,
at minus 40 the two scales read the same.
For half the year, Yellowstone is frozen solid.
Yet in the middle of this ice world there is scalding heat.
This is no ordinary place and this is no ordinary winter.
The fate of everything here lies in the hands of forces
of almost unimaginable power...

These poets... who write documentaries. And these actors, who could make a wikipedia entry sound like a poem.

As it gets colder, one animal here gets stronger.
Wolves. The winter is their time.
Gradually, it weakens their prey.
 
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