Thursday, March 29, 2012

Mr. Larry Williams and Mr. Niederhoffer's, Daily Speculations

I like to read different blogs in order to educate myself about a number of issues and topics. One blog that I like is Mr. Niederhoffer’s, “Daily Speculations.” This blog contains some interesting topics submitted by a variety of individuals. The other day I read a comment by Mr. Larry Williams. He said,

“The other day I heard somebody say:
"Assuming the future behaves the same as the past, I reason that this way makes my funds efficiently used".
I wanted to say, my experience is that the past is never like the future so we waste valuable time and skills on a false postulate.
As I see it, it is better to have a core strategy to deal with equity drawdowns, etc –based on logic–as opposed to a strategy based on the past real results or back tested as that is for the most part a make believe world since it never happens quite that way again.”


Most system traders backtest their ideas and models in order to have some confidence to trade into the future. As a system trader I always think about the future and if it will resemble the past or not. I wonder if the ideas behind my models will ever fail going forward. Mr. Niederhoffer likes to speak about ever-changing cycles in markets. These ever-changing cycles may eventually cause the breakdown of trading models. Perhaps, this is true.

Mr. Williams has spent much of the past teaching traders to backtest ideas, etc. He has made money teaching and writing books that include backtesting, etc. Has something changed? In addition, I believe Daily Spec removed Mr. Williams initial comments (or perhaps I cannot find them), but I can tell you that Mr. Williams had a much different tone in that post regarding the use of backtested info and using it to trade with.

I agree with Mr. Williams about having a logical strategy to deal with drawdowns, but backtesting is not a waste of time.

1 comment:

  1. Futures Trading is what other traders are targeting to invest in this year. You should invest in the right time with the right strategy.

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