rss

Trading Opportunities Through Analyzing Baseball

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.

Hypothesis of the day

Hypothesis I thought of the other day daydreaming:

A test of lows or highs is similar to how when you break up with a lover you always go back for a second try to probe to see if you made the right decision. Both parties are usually willing (bulls/bears and man/woman or etc/etc. If test falls short, low/high rejection a new trend is formed or new high/low is formed and trend is resumed. If two partners give it a second try either their relationship moves to new deeper levels of intimacy or they split up and look for new partners.

Of course break out failures and failed failures happen, but at least the scenarios can be confined to a limited set of outcomes.

7 Different common emotional mistakes:

7emotion

1. Emotional bias: the tendency to believe the things that make you feel good and to disregard things that make you feel bad. In trading terms, this means ignoring the bad news and focusing on the good news. It’s called losing objectivity; you don’t recognise when things go wrong because you don’t want to.

2. Expectation bias: the tendency to believe in things that you expect. In financial terms this means not bothering to analyse, test, measure or doubt the conclusion you expect or hope for. It is also known as the law of small numbers – believing in something with little real evidence.

3. The disposition effect: the tendency to cut your profits and let your losses run – the opposite of what a trader should be doing. Making small profits and big losses is a recipe for disaster.

4. Loss aversion: the tendency to value the avoidance of loss more highly than the making of gain. (more…)

Probabilities vs. expectations

I expect to wake up tomorrow morning and not die during the night.

I expect that I will be able to get out of bed and know how to walk to the kitchen.
I expect my car will start.
I expect the other person will stop at the red light.
I expect that I won’t get hit by lightning.
 
Seeing that expectations are what normal everyday life is founded on, is it natural to think that you can expect a stock to trade in a particular direction? Only if you want to become a loser.
The markets and stocks are not everyday life. They have the ability to do anything at any time. The only thing 100% certain is that they are 100% unpredictable.
If you have expectations, it means you have an emotional attachment or interest in an event outcome. Do you expect to make money, have a winning trade, make a right decision? When they happen are you giddy with excitement, gushing to all who will listen that you are so smart. What happens when you are wrong? How about wrong ten times in a row? If you live the highs you will be living the lows. Your expectations will destroy your confidence and thus your account. Your ego will take you back to childhood where you will throw tantrums and stomp your feet looking for a sympathetic ear. “The markets aren’t fair” you say. Well the markets don’t give a shit what your want or when you want it.
Now if instead you trade the probability of a outcome to an event, you can put a wall up between yourself as a person who is on autopilot accepting everyday expectations and you as a successful trader who is ruthless in the execution of your plan. Thinking, trusting and truly believing in probabilities will save the day for you. When you think that “based on my experience, seeing a very similiar situation before, odds are that the near future direction of this stock is this way. However since this event is unrelated in every way to my past memories, I must choose the point at which my decision will be proven wrong and set a protective stop here.”
When you think this way, it doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong. You are simply carrying out your trading plan based on your experience/edge. Playing the averages. You don’t get hurt by losing trades. You don’t get happy over winning trades. Whatever happens, happens. Being cold and calculating brings you as a trader closer to the machines that are running the show these days. (more…)

HOW TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS

When you have the time make a decision to watch the following program on making better decisions.  You may find that you made the right decision to do so.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:According to science: We are bad at making decisions. Our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice. And that’s assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!
Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil!

Go to top