Archives of “February 2019” month

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John F. Ehlers :Cycle Analytics for Traders (Book Review )

  
  Education

CYCLE ANALYTICSJohn F. Ehlers is probably best known for his MESA (maximum entropy spectral analysis) technical indicators, developed over thirty years ago. He has continued his research in this field and brings traders up to date with his latest book, Cycle Analytics for Traders: Advanced Technical Trading Concepts (Wiley, 2013).

Two types of traders should read this book: those who want to know why things work and those who are looking for new and improved indicators. Since I belong to the former category, I’ll quickly dispense with what probably interests most technical traders—indicators. The book comes with a PIN code to access and copy the EasyLanguage computer code found in the book, some of which is quite lengthy and would be exceedingly tedious to retype. Among the indicators whose code is provided are the decycler, decycler oscillator, band-pass filter, Hurst coefficient, roofing filter, modified (and adaptive) stochastic, modified (and adaptive) RSI, autocorrelation, autocorrelation periodogram, spectral estimate, even better sinewave indicator, convolution, and Hilbert transformer. There is code to compute the dominant cycle using the dual differentiator method, the phase accumulation method, and the homodyne method. There are also indicators for SwamiCharts. (If you don’t know what SwamiCharts are, a quick Google search will fill you in.)

As for the why. Ehlers is careful to explain the principles and the math behind these indicators. But he does more. He reflects on the very nature of the markets themselves. I was particularly struck by his thoughts on the drunkard’s walk hypothesis.

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This is how I worked it out-Nicolas Darvas

  
  Education
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This is how I worked it out. I asked my brokers to send out their telegrams after Wall Street closing time, so they would reach me at 6 P.M. This is about the time I get up – the result of performing in nightclubs for many years. Meanwhile, during the day, the telephone operator is instructed not to let any calls through. In this way everything happens in Wall Street while I am in bed. I am sleeping while they are working, and they cannot reach me nor worry me. My delegate, the stop-loss order, represents me in case something unforeseen happens. – Nicolas Darvas

worked it out

How to Be a Great Trader

  
  Education

Do Significant Work

  • Each of you has one life to live. Even if you believe in reincarnation it doesn’t do you any good from one life to the next! Why shouldn’t you do significant things in this one life, however you define significant?
  • I have to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, “Yes, I would like to do first-class work.” Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. You’re not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do great things by chance. Well, that’s a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why shouldn’t you set out to do something significant. You don’t have to tell other people, but shouldn’t you say to yourself, “Yes, I would like to do something significant.’

Have Courage and Confidence

  • One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going to.
  • That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage. They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to think.

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