Turning Points

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever figured out a truly accurate way to figure out future turning points. As far as I know, it has never been done. I don't believe that it will ever be done.

I have encountered traders who have told me that so-and-so does it, but I have never seen the proof. Nevertheless, I'm willing to listen. I used to live in the "show-me" State of Missouri, so show me!

When it comes to the future, I believe that man has no absolutes. The best he can do is to determine statistically the probabilities of the occurrence of an event. But statistics are not sufficiently exact for trading without a complimentary management method that takes into account the aberrations that are bound to occur. I mentioned a few of those in previous newsletters. Here are a few more: What do you do about flood, drought, pest invasions, earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, tornados, volcanic eruptions, revolutions, and other phenomenon that all can push prices and market action to the extreme limits of the bell curve? What do you do when farmers decide to hold back their crops, or ranchers decide to hold over their livestock for higher prices? That's where management comes into play. However, even the best management cannot compensate for bad fills caused by crooked players, slow turnaround, bad data, fast market conditions, illiquidity, electronic failures, system failures, poor back office accounting, high frequency trading, or a bunch of crazies blowing up the former World Trade Center.

As long as you chase the idea of perfecting your trading along the lines of predicting what will happen, you are consigning yourself to failure. The best you can do is to manage your trading along the lines of what is likely to happen, and then make your best effort from there, using your human brain and your human intuition. Those are really most of us have to work with.