Feb

16

When looking at a snapshot of a particular sport which you are attuned to, you can tell in an instant whether the person displayed is an amateur or a professional.

It's a bit like the markets. If you watch a market move day in day out, you can look at it at any one time, and have a reasonable "feeling" of how this market is set up.  If you rarely look at a particular market you don't have that feeling and are trying to make decisions based far too much on assumptions to do with how your core market may have performed (and not this particular one).

It is important I would say, to not try to trade too many markets, when speculating, as each has its own rhythm, and you must know this inside out. It is useful to ask whether any market snapshot in time, is the work of an amateur or a professional.


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Speak your mind

2 Comments so far

  1. Lon Evans on February 17, 2008 4:54 am

    P.S., I enjoy that the intro/invitation is to "Speak your mind."

    Thank you Laurel; thank you Victor - for granting such the beautiful opportunity.

    Dear Mr. Mee,

    How are we to approach any given market? I play the eeenie-meenie SnP. I'm now into my seventh year of doing so. It has been a seven years of trial and tribulation; and ultimately, of benefit, but hard bought benefit.

    Within the scope of available approaches, the average trader can easily be overcome by a plethora of viewpoints. Is it to be the 1-minute, the 3-minute, the 5-minute, the 15 minute, . . . etc?

    Of course, I speak only of the day trader. He is the last of the true speculators. He is a hunter in defiance of a multitude of agrians, willingly supported by the public; he is one of few available to wander the ever less available hinterlands in search of today's feed.

    And so, it is important to consider what might be the best approach to the game, given the disparities of opportunity and personality.

    All the above a long winded segue:

    How, Mr. Mee, do you define the difference between the amateur and the professional?

    Is it rude to demand of he that demands a difference, to define that difference?

    Sincerely (and as confrontational as ever),

    lon

    Double P.S.

    As long as I’m sitting out towards the end of the limb, my take is that Monday will close an up day. Do with the opinion what you will.

    (Aforementioned opinion based upon no further toxic waste being showered expectantly upon an unsuspecting public).

  2. Adam Sterling on February 19, 2008 7:11 pm

    I’ve been following baseball most of my life and enjoy flattering myself that after four decades paying close attention I know something about this infinite game.

    One easily observed difference between an amateur and professional batter is seen in the set-up at the plate. The amateur settles in to take his swing. The professional goes through a series of exactly repeated nearly ritual motions when preparing to face the pitcher.

    The amateur batter swings at what he imagines are “good” pitches, many of which are far from optimal. The professional batter has divided the strike zone into multiple sub-sectors and will only swing at pitches thrown into specific areas.

    The iconic example of this is Ted Williams, the most successful batter in the sport’s history. Williams divided the strike zone into 77 sub-sectors, seven baseballs wide and eleven high. He simply would not swing at sub-optimal pitches, thus achieving outstanding, robust results.

    The difference between an amateur and professional batter becomes most stark in their response to failure. An amateur batter will change his behavior under the influence of recency bias, trying to compensate for the previous failure. The professional batter, having carefully studied his own performance distribution, will stick to his set-up rituals and sub-sector rules.

    After previous careers, I’ve been trading for a living only a few years. Not long enough to know what those in the know truly know. Many of the contributors here have swung their bat in the bigs; I never have.

    Yet, having gone through the early stage of swinging at whatever I imagined was a good trade, I did find what set-up works best for me and try to swing only at those pitches in sub-sectors for which there’s positive expectancy, even during a slump. It’s a long season, after all. I think that realizing this, and building upon it, began the progression toward professionalism.

    Adam Sterling.

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