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Trading Opportunities Through Analyzing Baseball

  
  Education
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If you got Pennington to find any valuable info when you asked him to develop quantitative analogies between forest life cycles and those of corporations to find some profitable trades you could certainly do the same in finding some numerical formula that could identify trade opportunities by analyzing baseball.

Each team– a stock, the aggregate teams– the market, each player– a corporate division, each salary– an investment made in the division and the company, each relevant performance statistic– a relevant performance statistic. Identify the right decision mix that makes teams perform better over time and improve over time and analyze similarities in companies doing the same.

The greatest liability is  also the greatest asset– human decision and performance permeate the game of baseball from start to finish and one could question whether it’s possible to find a truly consistent system as a result. I would argue that this complexity makes it a perfect analogy to market/company performance. It moves based on imbedded and sometimes unexplainable intellect and experience of its participants. The chaotic human decision making process is pervasive in both.

Indecision and the Win

  
  Education
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kapil dev

Watching cricket (or the same could be applied to baseball for the Americans or football for the Europeans and Brits…and South Americans and…) I have often considered how structured and polished the performances are– clean batting, clean bowling and clean fielding.

When is a risk taker going to be coach? When will some one bring the advantages of risk and a polished team into play?

Indecision must bring opportunities.

Why couldn’t a fielding team (that’s getting flogged or maybe not flogged) start to miss EASY field returns, but have a back up plan–thereby allowing for the batting team to be lured into a second run and capitalise on the often poor communication between batters looking for a run out.

Many other ideas and ways of creating opportunities to take advantage of a situation could be put in play. It seems most areas are not being explored.

Markets certainly don’t have those problems with a muliple of false break outs catching everyone on the hop, and whether we like it or not, keeping the game interesting.

The Difference Between Skill and Luck

  
  Education
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Basketball comes closest to chess in terms of being the game with the most skill involved. In comparison, hockey looks more like the lottery (and don’t even ask about trading). 

The bottom line is that the law of smaller numbers allows for more variance in individual player and game outcomes in a sport like baseball or hockey – in baseball the most skilled hitter only gets up to bat a few times per game and in hockey the star players aren’t on the ice much more than a period or two out of three. Less plate appearances or ice time can mean that it is more likely that a fluke of some sort, good or bad luck, can make an impact.  This is in contrast to basketball where there are only five players at any time and the stars typically play most of the game – more playing time means a bigger sample, by extension this means less variance.

Perfectionism:

  
  Education
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There is no perfection in trading as far as making money on every trade or having a perfect system. All you can hope to be perfect at, is following your system, rules, and trading plan. A winning trade should be measured as one in which you followed all your preset guidelines. Even the best traders only average about a 50%-60% win rate at best over long periods of time. The key is having bigger winners than losers, not being perfect. Like in baseball where a .300 hitter can get into the hall of fame. A .500 trader in the market can become wealthy if his wins outpace his losses.

Trading is an art

  
  Education
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Once, there were two farmers who lived in the desert.  Both desperately needed to acquire water so they could survive the desert and support their families.  After working together to search the area, they concluded there was water somewhere in the area but they were not sure where.  So, they set out to find a water well. They started digging in similar locations between their properties. After they both dug for several days, the second farmer finally struck water. As soon as this happened, the first farmer could see it from a distance and ran over to the second farmer.  Seeing that he had stuck a huge water well, he asked the farmer, “You and I had the same tools for digging and have been digging in similar locations.  How did you find water and I did not?” 

The second farmer asked him, “How did you dig for water?” 

The first farmer responded, “I went and dug 50 holes 1 foot deep trying to get maximum coverage of my area.  What did you end up doing?” 

The second farmer replies, “Oh!  That is very interesting.  I dug one hole, 50 feet deep.” 

Many traders set out on the path of trading and do exactly what the first farmer did – they dig 50 holes 1 foot deep. If you are going to strike water, gold or oil, you will have to dig one hole, 50 feet deep.  The reason for this is a matter of mastery. To be a master at anything, you have to become so familiar with it, know how it works inside and out to the point you understand every aspect of what you are doing.  (more…)

Keys for Successful Traders

  
  Education
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mentalstrengthThe biggest obstacle to successful trading is failing to recognize that losses are part of the game, and, further, that they must be accommodated. The perfect trading system that allows for only gains does not exist. Expecting, or even hoping for, perfection is a guarantee of failure. Trading is akin to batting in baseball. A player hitting .300 is good. A player hitting .400 is great. But even the great player fails to hit 60% of the time! Remember, you don’t have to be perfect to win in the markets. Practically speaking, this is why you also need an objective money management system.

experience

It takes experience to succeed. Now, some people advocate “paper trading” as a learning tool. Paper trading is useful for testing methodologies, but it has no real value in learning about trading. In fact, it can be detrimental, because it imbues the novice with a false sense of security. “Knowing” that he has successfully paper-traded during the past six months, he believes that the next six months trading with real money will be no different. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Why? Because the markets are not merely an intellectual exercise, they are an emotional one as well. Think about it, just because you are mechanically inclined and like to drive fast doesn’t mean you have the necessary skills to win the Daytona 500.

 

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