Experiments in Technical Analysis

kkseal

Well-Known Member
Ok, so a stationary series is one whose statistical properties are constant along its length. Its quite well documented that financial time-series are heavy-tailed and not stationary.Volatility clustering is another important topic, i.e tendency of autocorrelation in volatility.Given all these different conditions, I think its absolutely treacherous to try and detect signals in all this noise.Theres just too much randomness to deal with here than most people think and most are 'getting' fooled by it.
Very true. I have a method that i'd say is doing ok, but still i'm not sure if the premises are right. (And what is the most basic premise? The price-time data series on which everything else is based) I can sense this with my hesitation with stop-losses. It's not just indiscipline, actually i'm afraid. And what do i fear? The randomness. Even if i have identified the dominant cycle correctly, the randomness can still get me, stop me out prematurely That is what i'm afraid of. So i just let it play around a bit as long as the dominant trend is intact. However not using a SL also leaves me insecure and vulnerable. Who knows that buy signal itself might have been one the games that this randomness plays! So i try to do the best i can by taking a mean of the trend and subtracting (or adding, for shorts) a certain multiple of the average (short-term) volatility. (And don't hesitate to veer from this scheme if a more logical stop-level is nearby. Even for entry-stops i think one should go by the logical levels and risk-reward estimates rather than any fixed %. Randomness doesn't count percentages)

Regards,
Kalyan.
 

kkseal

Well-Known Member
Today (inspired by earlier posts made by CV, Karthik & Anant) i was reading about the ZEMA - the zero-lag EMA. Ehler's method is based on analogy of a shooter shooting a non-stationary target and a method that uses not just the price but also the ROC of price. Even with all that what do we get? A MA crossover system perhaps that gives earlier signals, but does that solve everything? Nope. 'Coz those MAs are still based on fixed time cycles (which i don't think is constant at all) In order to get over that problem one needs to make those MAs adaptive. How? There can be two ways (or more, 2 is what i can envisage)

Either base them on a more 'transformed' noise-filtered view of the data (Ehler's MAMA & FRAMA) OR
Make them adaptive to the predominant component of the randomness itself - voatility (Chande's VIDYA) (so that they kind of 'factor in' the randomness)

And MA is just one kind of indicator, there are many more to deal with.

Alternatively, there can be another approach and that is to avoid the noise ridden price data completely for basing ones entry/exit decisions. To use something that has a high correlation with but not directly based on the price data series. Like CVs sentiment indicator.
Now this may be ok if one is trading the index (i.e. the mkts directly), but what when one is trading stocks? There i think the only way is one of cross-verification. Not relying on any one signal but using a convergence of multiple - what may be called the 'cluster' approach :)

Any better ideas folks for poor stock traders like myself?

Regards,
Kalyan.
 
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karthikmarar

Well-Known Member
Hi,

CreditViolet I am a gr8 fan of yours and wouldlove to learn trading from you. Our forum is lucky to have ppl like you who is always willing to help

bravo :p ;) :) :eek:
 
U

uasish

Guest
Hi,
Trading Risk is basically calculating the standard deviation of historical returns or
its avg.return of my module(maybe MACD).This module or TA is a derivative of Price / data.
No quantitative or qualitative analysis of the scrip but Pure price.( MACD is only a Trend
following Momentum Indicator.)Here at this stage i am flooded with options,whether RSI or
Bollinger Band or MACD etc etc.All derivative of Price / Data.To minimize Filter Risk,
(the moment say i discard RSI for MACD i am running a filter risk)we recourse to backtesting.
Again another Risk factors Autoregressive risk (the assumption past performance may be
replicated in future)creeps in.This is now becoming difficult to Percieve the TOTALITY.
1st let us fix the ROOT.My EOD data ,repeats the occurence in fixed interval.(This realization
Hit me ,when Souyma_b,installed an utility in my computer to extract intraday data to Metastock
from PIB,and i found all my Good indicators are giving below par results barring few,i have
deliberately deleted that utility).Now my Time frame is fixed.
whenever i say datas occurence is in fixed time interval,there is a fallacy.An example :=
In Horse racing tract ,a term "Photo Finish" is used to determine the winner in a neck to neck
contest,a stationary camera at finishing line takes a picture,the horse which is most ahead
at that moment is declared winner.Visualize galloping horses in breck neck speed ,side by side.
A Photograph of that non-stationary objects is captured ,where the basic Physics of "Camera"
says "IT HAS TO BE STATIONARY",yes it was stationary in say 1/200 th of a Sec.
So my EOD data IS STATIONARY in that context.
Next quality of this Data.Any data service,giving me the
O,H,L,C,Vol,OI,accurately with Reference(NSE declared EOD figs ,in my case)is absolutely OK.
There is a Myth promoted by "Paid Data Service",until it is Paid ,it is bad quality.Tell me
other than the authenticity & pre adjustments( dividend / bonus) of data ,can there be any
Quality aspect of data.
1st Root is seeded here.
a) Data is Stationary.
b) Data is Quality Data.
Data Mining is used in all fields to identify a Pattern on a large data bank.Any pre filtering
of data before apllying a Price Derivative brews "Bias".We always do that,maybe for Liquidity
etc.or with other objective ,so this is the LOOP part after seeding.

After yesterday night's CV's post HIT me a serious review once again strenghtened my self belief.
Any tinkering of Data is Data Mining or TA which it self is the process for Signal generation.
 
Hello everybody,

Can anybody please tell me (espesially Karthik) what is metastock & what is amibroker? Kindly please tell me what is that programming kind of thing written under "Elliot Wave" & "Elliot Wave Signals"? as Iam very new to this forum & trading too...
Eagerly waiting for reply.

Abhijit.
 
Hi Oldmirage,

The codes posted in this thread are for AmiBroker. AmiBroker is not FREE software. However you can download a trial version from ................

-Anant
Hi Anant!
Hope you are doing well.
I want to discuss some issues with you. I tried sending u a PM but it appears that your PM is disabled at the moment.
Hence, can you please send me an email on aca.ashish[at]yahoo.com or enable your PM?

Best Regards,
--Ashish
 

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