Ajay Jani Passes on the Wisdom
I met Ajay Jani at a Superfund event in early summer. Ajay, who is not affiliated with Superfund, trades out of NYC and passed along to me tonight a recent debate he had:
Michael, I thought you’d get a kick out of this story. I was having a discussion with a dyed-in-the wool fundamentalist. No amount of information regarding the merits of trend-following or the examples of success using the strategy would sway this person from the view that nothing matters except the fundamentals. Eventually he brought out the old chestnut:
Fundamentalist: ‘Heck, they’ve done experiments where technical traders couldn’t tell the difference between a real price chart and one generated by a computer!’
Me: ‘You’re absolutely right; In fact I would probably fail that test on most charts as well. However, you’ve forgotten one thing. When I trade in the marketplace, ALL of those charts are real. Nobody trades on a fake price chart. All the trades you see are real. But I can tell you I have seen a lot of phony balance sheets and income statements in my time and a lot of fundamentalists traded on them! In fact, they are probably trading on them today as we speak.’
At that point, he gave up and shrugged, though I’m still not sure he’s convinced! Best, Ajay
