Daytrading beliefs

Cover of Richard Feynman

Cover of Mark Twain

Matt asked:

From: Matth<snip>
To: Ken Long <longke@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2013 8:11 PM
Subject: Beliefs

Hi Ken:

Been working on on my mission statements and business trading plan. I would like to model you – day trading (if you have no objections)

What are your beliefs that I could/should find useful.

Thanks Matt

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my preliminary answer

i am on a journey of eliminating beliefs, trying to show cause why ANY belief is necessary as opposed to accumulating beliefs

i believe therefore that a couple essential beliefs are helpful; maybe these are attitudes more than beliefs:

1. Ask: what’s the evidence for this belief? Why is it necessary to have a belief on this subject?

2. What is a proper degree of confidence to hold on the basis of the evidence available?

3. What are the limits of the belief? or alternatively: how robust is this belief?

or, from a constructivist perspective: what is the utility of this belief-structure? What are the characteristics of the scaffolding? What does it allow me to do?

or Practically:

if you look at my daily and weekend report, I would say that each indicator/report-chunk is there because I have some belief that they have information content

or Specifically:

each published system has statements of core beliefs, assumptions, models, rules that stand together as a whole

the RFA e-book has a ton of things that might reward the research

my video on “Edges” recorded at an IITM workshop is probably a useful collection of beliefs

i have a very strong belief in the sayings of Mark Twain with respect to human nature and behavior and in the sayings found in the complete book of Murphy’s Law when it comes to mankind trying to exert mastery over Nature, like “Measure with a micrometer, mark with a crayon, cut with an axe”

a lot of beliefs could be found in the chatroom archives where i respond to questions. I find that questions push me to articulate beliefs out of the messy stew of ideas in my head at any time

whatever my belief sets contain has to be large enough to stretch from the sparse beliefs and rules of the Frog to the increasingly complex RLCO-SQC framework

i am more interested in “intentional” action than I am in trying to find some kind of grand theory of everything for daytrading; that’s in line with Feynman‘s belief that he was not trying to find ultimate truth, but rather simply trying to find out more about how the world works. I think that’s a healthy belief

i have a belief in the trade frames i make when i am preparing to act. i believe they represent reasonable reward: risk ratio opportunities. I believe that the habit of framing consistently builds proficiency an effective action/mental muscle memory and that over time provides an effective way to internalize adaptive judgement

start with the frog and RLCO frameworks; watch the live trading tapes and listen to my commentary for a belief set, especially when i am marking up the charts to try to create sense, sense enough to act

probably not the specific answer you were looking for, but it’s a start