Titles and More Titles
A good comment in from a reader:
“I am wondering why people spend tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours gaining designations like CFA, CIMA, and CMT? They all look nice on a CV or job application but none of them help you to accurately predict where markets are headed or how much they will move. There should be a Trend Following designation. I think that’s the only useful money management strategy. Reactive technical analysis, NOT predictive is really the only sensible way to make money unless you win the lottery or get lucky on a penny stocks or deep out-of-the-money calls.”
ROSLI HUSSIN Added:
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
There should be a Trend Following designation, may be TF Rosli, TF Michael
I am lucky to have known this strategy 13 years ago.
Before that I lost a lot of money until then I met this website.
Thank you Turtletrader.com
Tom Added:
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 am
@reader:
I’m using a medium-term trend-following strategy myself(long only) for almost six years now (kudos to Al Thomas). I tried both buy-and-hope as well as short term trading and found both not appealing. Still, I think there are many ways of making money in the markets, as long as the risk side is covered and the strategy has a statistical edge. Ultimately, as Tom Basso is cited by Van Tharp, one needs some sort of price movement (which may be called a “trend”) after entering a position in order to be able to exit with a profit. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone using such price movements sucessfully should be considered a trend follower in your sense.
Just my 2 cents.
Rob Added:
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
@reader:
Isn’t there more to life than money? Can’t anybody keep educating himself (PhD, CAIA, FRM, whatever he/she has an interest in) w/o the only goal of making money? If you have a second… just think about it. Money itself doesn’t make you happz — not even you.
Chuck Added:
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Somebody please explain this paradox. The person linked to below has both CFA and CMT after his name. I thought that Chartered Financial Analyst meant that market activity means nothing; winners are found by studying financial and economic data. Meanwhile, Chartered Market Technician meant that you ignore the financial data (most of which is put out by the company itself) and you ignore the economic data (most of which comes from the government) and you focus on price and volume activity. How can anybody stand there and simultaniously think that these both work?
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/williams/main.html
cy Added:
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:09 am
@rob
Money may not “buy” happiness, but it can certainly help. More money (and more specifically high net worth, not necessarily high income) allows one to have far more control over his/her own life compared to someone living paycheck to paycheck. (Regardless of the size of that paycheck) Regarding your post, I do not know of anyone who would put themselves through the mind-numbing CFA process just for “the love of education.” Anyone that goes through the tests does so for purely economic reasons. If you want to get a PhD in philosophy, or history, or whatever, I’m cool with that. What the original post was trying to say is that the CFA (or CMT) is useless to the market participant, so it shouldn’t be marketed as (or thought of) as such.
chump Added:
October 25th, 2008 at 12:26 am
@cy
You need to get out more, you might meet some poor happy people and you might bump into someone that earned a designation for the fun of it. Are you cool with that (just wanted to make sure)?
Don’t you want non-trend followers(designation earners) in the market to take the other side of trades (zero-sum)?
cy Added:
October 26th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
@chump-
Chump, you seem to be upset with me, but I don’t understand why. What, specifically, do you disagree with? I know 25-75 people that are, have, or are planning on taking the CFA, and I do not know one who is taking it simply because he or she finds the material so interesting he feels compelled to earn the designation. If you (or a family member, or a large group of your friends/acquaintances) endeavor to earn the CFA without any career considerations, I suppose I am wrong, and there are people out there that actually do that. However, in this situation, the burden of proof falls upon you.
Regarding my desire to see “non-trend followers [remain] in the market,” I think I can safely say that I will not see 100% of risk capital allocated to systematic approaches at any point in my lifetime. (I could probably live to be 1,000 and still be safe.) That said, if it gets up around 90% or so, please alert me. I’ll go back to the drawing board and try to figure out another way to make money.