Signing In

[dfoley834]

Hello
I am DFoley (aka Aluminium) and in general a writer, investor, and believer in the prognostic power of numbers. I have studied probability, methodology and gambling systems not to any great success but to a belief system. I was a specialist on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 70"s and worked in L.A. on the Pacific Coast Exchange when it still existed. I am an active trader and seeker of new ideas. Also, good writing.
Thanks for having me.

[Doug Coulter]

You are welcome! Not many here who care about trading (yet), but hey! That could change. I'm doing my little writing on it on the water cooler forum (I made it sticky there) to see what reaction I'd get (not much yet but some) and if it takes off -- we'll make someplace "official" to put things like that. Else, it's pretty off topic for a science/tech board, except it's how
this particular scientist funds the research (and food!).

You can't possibly think my writing is all that good But at least I do a lot of it! Maybe too much, I'm very hard on keyboards to say the least.

Curtis Faith is a member here, and I'm hoping any other experienced traders will chime in on the thread I'm doing about it all, with suggestions and of course any good writing of your own.
When he finishes his current trading book, hopefully he'll get on that one too -- and he writes better than I do by a good bit.

What I'm going for on that particular thread is "trading for techies", because that's what I am and there seems to be some confluence of skillsets that make techies
good traders (at least some of them). Interesting, because they already understand to the toes some things most people don't, but don't get some things most people do,
so that colors what I write about and how, for that audience.

Of course, there's no limit to what new threads can be started. Water cooler is a catch-all forum to keep the rest on-topic -- the rest we are trying to keep pretty clean and organized
to maximize their value to others. In essence, we are "writing the book" from the point of view of those who do the stuff, hands on, not some esoteric theory, but what really works
and how it's made to work. Most of us know the theories too -- but they get oversimplified and mis-applied too much for my taste anyway, and don't correctly predict emergent behavior -- clarify it, but in hindsight only.

If you are a big believer in numbers, there will be some difference of opinion about how I trade -- which is actually great! Because it is from seeing the same thing through different eyes that most people learn the best and easiest, and learning and helping are what this place is all about.

Me, I'm a behaviorist rather than a charter when it comes to trading, but yes, the charts and technical analysis are a key to understanding (and predicting) behavior as it affects markets....so, is there really a difference, or not? That's one of the endlessly fascinating things about it to me -- more than one viewpoint works well, there's no "Theory of everything" that universally applies.