So I was talking to someone today who claims they make around 10% on average per trade and has close to 90% of winning trades.
They also claim they recently talked to several market makers who used to work for Merrill Lynch and CBOT and presumably they told him that mathematics doesn't help with trading these days at all.
And this guy thinks so too and is dead serious about it.He event went as far as calling morons people that want to analyze things closer or want to have a broader knowledge of finance.
Did I mention that he's very keen on using indicators in his trading and always on the lookout for indicator-related technical materials?
At first I thought he wasn't using indicators at all and that's why he's so anti math...but when I found out that he does things changed a lot.
How in the world can someone claim to be so successful in trading (with indicators, which have been created with the help of statistical observations) and yet deny the usefulness of anything related to trading math?
I mean don't you need at least some basic understanding of statistics to understand the impact of the settings you input into your indicator?
Otherwise you'd be copying what most other people do without understanding why they do it.
No problems if you use the standard settings, but what if you decide one day you want to adjust things? How can you expect to adjust the correct parameter and in the correct proportion if you don't understand how it impacts the results?
How do you expect to choose the correct indicators to use if you don't know how they work and how they produce signals?
One thing I didn't ask this person was for how long he's been trading...he sounded like such an arrogant mf that I congratulated him of his performance and went on to take care of other things.
I'm suspecting he's either been trading for very little time or was up until now on a lucky streak and hasn't had any major drawdawn with his fantastic trading method.
Have I lost the plot or do you need at least some basic math and statistics knowledge if you plan to use indicators in your trading, successfully?
Does the "average" 10% per trade return sound like proper money management has been used to you? I didn't do the exact calculations and probably won't be unless I know more about how he trades, but from what I know, most of the times you need to risk a lot to make a lot.
Getting back to what the market makers presumably told him...maybe they were biased because of the way they make their money as market makers.
Maybe they were even making fun of him?
On a side not, I think that even some basic correlations between forex pairs for instance can be useful in certain conditions.But it requires that you understand what a correlation is and at least how to write =correl() in Excel in order to calculate it.
So in short, I don't think you need to be a math genius to be a good trader, but knowing some math I believe can improve your trading decisions.
What do you think?
They also claim they recently talked to several market makers who used to work for Merrill Lynch and CBOT and presumably they told him that mathematics doesn't help with trading these days at all.
And this guy thinks so too and is dead serious about it.He event went as far as calling morons people that want to analyze things closer or want to have a broader knowledge of finance.
Did I mention that he's very keen on using indicators in his trading and always on the lookout for indicator-related technical materials?
At first I thought he wasn't using indicators at all and that's why he's so anti math...but when I found out that he does things changed a lot.
How in the world can someone claim to be so successful in trading (with indicators, which have been created with the help of statistical observations) and yet deny the usefulness of anything related to trading math?
I mean don't you need at least some basic understanding of statistics to understand the impact of the settings you input into your indicator?
Otherwise you'd be copying what most other people do without understanding why they do it.
No problems if you use the standard settings, but what if you decide one day you want to adjust things? How can you expect to adjust the correct parameter and in the correct proportion if you don't understand how it impacts the results?
How do you expect to choose the correct indicators to use if you don't know how they work and how they produce signals?
One thing I didn't ask this person was for how long he's been trading...he sounded like such an arrogant mf that I congratulated him of his performance and went on to take care of other things.
I'm suspecting he's either been trading for very little time or was up until now on a lucky streak and hasn't had any major drawdawn with his fantastic trading method.
Have I lost the plot or do you need at least some basic math and statistics knowledge if you plan to use indicators in your trading, successfully?
Does the "average" 10% per trade return sound like proper money management has been used to you? I didn't do the exact calculations and probably won't be unless I know more about how he trades, but from what I know, most of the times you need to risk a lot to make a lot.
Getting back to what the market makers presumably told him...maybe they were biased because of the way they make their money as market makers.
Maybe they were even making fun of him?
On a side not, I think that even some basic correlations between forex pairs for instance can be useful in certain conditions.But it requires that you understand what a correlation is and at least how to write =correl() in Excel in order to calculate it.
So in short, I don't think you need to be a math genius to be a good trader, but knowing some math I believe can improve your trading decisions.
What do you think?