An excerpt of an interview with Art Collins and Richard Dennis follows. First the question from Collins and then the answer from Dennis:
Q. How hands on are you behind the programmers? Are you standing behind them explaining exactly what you want optimized, etc?
A. I spend most of my time talking to programmers and waiting for results. I’ve been working with most of these people for 20 years so I•m able to get into that intermediate zone between computer-ese and real English. I call them up and say here’s the idea in English. Here’s my idea of how it would go in the program, but you’re the guys who are going to have to decide that ultimately. It’s actually quite an adventure because a good programmer will get the first iteration wrong half the time.
Barry Ritholtz brings up the notion of Google’s black box and how it might affect the firm’s fundamentals. For me it is further confirmation as to why the only real thing you can know is the traded price each and every day.
La Mere Vipere, often called the world’s first punk dance club, opened in Chicago in 1977. It subsequently burned down in 1978. At that bar not yet a Turtle Lucy Wyatt met Richard Dennis’ brother Tom Dennis (also a trader). There is a very good chance the Turtle experiment would never have happened if not for that random chance encounter between Lucy Wyatt and Tom Dennis (more on that to come). And that chance encounter surely included the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten belting out at least once that night “God Save the Queen“.
Hi Michael! This is not a response to anything in particular. It may even qualify as a rant. The idea below keeps popping up in many settings and I don’t get it. Maybe you can explain why it makes sense or why it persists when it doesn’t. The idea is the “price target”, as in, “Sell the stock when it reaches your price target”. A common way to create a price target is to estimate what the P/E ratio should be or will be, and estimate what earnings will be. Then, multiply these two numbers to get the target price. Thus, this number is the product (both literal-mathematically and figuratively) of multiplying a guess by another guess to end up with a number that is believed to be significant and should govern your trading. So, if I have a stock that is heading up like a rocket leaving the launch pad, I’m supposed to dump it because it reached some analyst’s price target? Regards, Chuck Cain
I had the opportunity to spend four hours tonight with Turtle Lucy Wyatt Mattinen in Reston, Virginia. While we did not speak for the hard cover edition of my book, Wyatt Mattinen’s interview added great detail for a new Afterword that will appear in the 2009 paperback edition.
Can anyone decipher this for me? I can’t tell where he is trying to go exactly. My (2) books, as but an example, don’t cover traders with “uncertainty of exit schemes”.
One reader writes:
Hi Michael, I read the article you linked to and was thinking it was another mathematician over-optimizing everything in sight, then I read the date it was published - 1st April 2008! So I guess it’s a case of take your pick really….Matt
A review of “The Complete TurtleTrader” from Quint Tatro of Minyanville.com. He asked the rhetorical question: “What books did you read during 1Q?”
Consistently soaking in knowledge is a must in this profession and as you grow your desire for outside literature should increase. This past quarter my reading was hit or miss. I read about five trading/investing books and four out of five were garbage. The following was the only one worth mentioning: “The Complete TurtleTrader”: This was a great read by Michael Covel and delved into the depths of the Turtle strategy which, in a trending market, correlates with my style quite well.
