Prediction market blogger quits InTrade.

No Gravatar

Ben Shannon:

New Year Update

Posted by Jesse Livermore on Sunday, January 3, 2010

I&#8217-ve been gone for a while. There just hasn&#8217-t been that much happening on Intrade, and I&#8217-ve been focusing on neuroscience.

Intrade has definitely gotten tougher over the past year. I think the 2008 election drew in a lot of people who weren&#8217-t very good at politics or gambling. By now those people have either lost their money or gotten better. Hopefully the 2010 elections will draw in a new crop.

In the mean time, Intrade&#8217-s management has not done a great job in developing the brand. My impression is that volume is off by more than 50% compared to last year. Chief difficulties:
Absolutely no advertising whatsoever.
Diminished interest in politics in an off-year.
Getting money onto the site requires a lot of determination and a visit to a gas station to buy a Netspend card.

Future updates on this blog will be less-than-daily, basically when I have an opinion about politics that I feel like sharing.

Jesse Livermore’s 7 Trading Lessons

The late Jesse Livermore is considered one of the best traders of all time. His exploits have been chronicled in several books, with the most widely read being Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre, originally published in 1923.

Livermore was wealthy and broke several times over during his tumultuous life, which ended in his suicide. His ability to make and lose millions garnered him many lessons which the trading community have enshrined over the decades since his death. Yet these lessons and rules remain as pertinent today as they were in the early twentieth century.

We’ll take a look at several of his trading rules to remind us why we must have a plan in place before trading a dollar of our hard-earned money.

(I must give credit to the Lefevre book mentioned above, as well as Jesse Livermore: World’s Greatest Stock Trader by Richard Smitten, for the following ideas.)

Lesson Number One: Cut your losses quickly.

Nowhere is this rule more apparent than in the modern-day crash our markets experienced in the fall of 2008. For those market participants who “bought, held, and hoped,” the gut-wrenching drop left them paralyzed, disillusioned, and angry at the market. They felt like they had no control and no choice as the losses spiraled down the rabbit hole. The primary culprits of this death trap are hopeful thinking and fearful paranoia.

As a market slides lower, a trader will rationalize his losing position by either doubling down (buying more at these now-cheaper prices) or at the very least, holding on because “there’s just no way this market can go lower.” If merely this one simple rule was implemented to “cut your losses,” the vast majority of traders would be light years ahead of the crowd.

As soon as a trade is contemplated, a trader must know at what point in time he’ll be proven wrong and exit a position. If a trader doesn’t know his exit before he takes the entry, he might as well go to the racetrack or casino where at least the odds can be quantified. Trading without an exit plan is like driving a car without insurance. You might go years without a major crash, but when the crash occurs (and it will), you want to be protected from a major financial disaster.

Lesson Number Two: Confirm your judgment before going all in.

Livermore was famous for throwing out a small position and waiting for his thesis to be confirmed. Once the stock was traveling in the direction he desired, Livermore would pile on rapidly to maximize the returns. He admitted that his biggest mistake was holding on to a position as it ran against him, and then selling out when the pain got too great.

Livermore learned to remedy this dilemma by taking on a small line at first, and only adding when he was proven correct. There are several decent ways to buy more in a winning position (pyramiding up, buying in thirds at predetermined prices, being 100% in no more than 5% above the initial entry) but the take home is to buy in the direction of your winning trade — and never when it goes against you.

Lesson Number Three: Watch leading stocks for the best action.

One hundred years, ago Mr. Livermore didn’t have near as many issues to track, yet he made it his mission to follow the market makers and big players when their money flooded into a specific stock or commodity. Livermore knew that trending issues were where the big money would be made, and to fight this reality was a loser’s game.

Today, traders have the ability to track sectors, ETFs, and the footprints of the best mutual-fund managers to ascertain where the heavy hitters are moving their capital. Superstars such as Google (GOOG), Goldman Sachs (GS), and General Electric (GE) can also show their hand when looking at the bigger picture of overall market health. Traders ignore these tells at their own peril.

Lesson Number Four: Let profits ride until price action dictates otherwise.

Perhaps the most famous quote attributed to Livermore is, “It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.” Traders are wired to be “doing something,” and this can cause churning, over-trading, getting out of positions too soon, and making your broker the wealthy one. The famous Turtle Traders were trend traders who made few trades and had learned the importance of staying in a winning trade.

For today’s traders, there are multiple variations to keep you in a trade. It’s not so important which method you implement, but that you do recognize when to hold a winner for maximum potential, and when a trend has changed character and it’s time to ring the register.

One method that satisfies the desire for profit and subdues the fear of a losing trade is to take one half of your profit off at a predetermined level, put a stop at breakeven on the rest, and let it play out without micromanaging the position. Even day and swing traders will benefit from letting a partial position play out when all indicators hint that more upside might be in the cards. Always remember this rule is letting a profitable position run, but it’s not a license to bury one’s head on a losing position.

Lesson Number Five: Buy all-time new highs.

Traders love a bargain — trying to bottom feed, buying in on limit orders instead of market to save a penny, buying on dips, and various other trickery to try and catch the swing low of a trade. These same traders can also recount when saving a penny cost them a dollar, buying that dip was only the start of a long downtrend, and buying new lows only led to lower prices and more misery.

Livermore understood that when a trader buys new highs, that for that moment in time, the only holders are happy holders. Blue skies are above and there are no longer-term investors waiting to sell once they get back to break even. The psychological merits of buying all-time or 52-week highs are immense and shouldn’t be discounted as a part of your overall strategy.

Lesson Number Six: Use pivot points to determine trends.

Livermore famously called them “pivotal points” and today they’re better known as swing highs and swing lows. When going long, traders are continually looking for confirmation by assessing the strength of a move. Higher highs and higher lows are a solid indicator that a current uptrend is merely taking a slight pause, and the odds of higher prices are in their favor. These same pivot points are integral to drawing support and resistance lines to give traders their line in the sand. Taken together, trend lines and pivot points can enlighten a trader to a change in momentum, which may change the character of a trade.

Lesson Number Seven: Control your emotions.

Easier said than done in everyday life, let alone in one’s trading account, controlling those emotional demons that lurk under the surface may be the most difficult task for traders (beginners and seasoned alike) to master. You finally hit a quick 10-point winner, and the euphoria and pride rush in to give you a virtual high-five. You hold on past your mental stop-loss and watch your equity bleed like a leaking faucet, which in turn causes you to seethe with frustration, whether on the outside or internally. If there’s one absolute rule, it’s that every trader has to confront the role they allow their emotions to play in their trading life.

Livermore chronicles the times when he was trading for revenge, to get back his lost stake, or merely to prove he was right. By his own admission, these were terrible reasons to put on a trade, and he was at his finest when he blocked out the noise of his day and just watched the tape.

Our goal as traders should be to also make a critical yet honest assessment of the areas we can improve so the bottom line will support our claims of truly being seasoned traders. Adhering to the time-tested rules of Jesse Livermore would be a great start for anyone.

Midas Oracle is the only website in the world to have told you *not* to bet on Chicago -and to stay (far) away from any Olympics venue prediction market.

Previously: Will Chicago get the Olympics? Dona€™t bet on it. Too risky.

6-000-dollars-on-chicago

Had Ben Shannon listened to us, he would have spared $6,000 &#8212-yes, that&#8217-s six thousand US dollars.

burning-money

Next: Could we have divined that Chicago was a lemon?

Why an analyst should assess each newly created prediction market

IOC

The Chicago candidacy, which was favored by the prediction markets (and gullible bettors like Ben Shannon), is the one that fared the worst.

As we have blogged here many times, not every prediction market is created equal. Some are bound to aggregate bits of known information. Some others (e.g., the Olympic city prediction markets) are not able to do that, because no good information is leaking out. The IOC is a close aristocratic group that does not leak out good information. Those who forgot that and bet the farm on Chicago are now licking their wounds. You need an information analyst to assess whether a particular prediction market is pertinent.

– BetFair&#8217-s event derivative prices:

chicago-olympics-betfair

– InTrade&#8217-s event derivative prices:

chicago-olympics-intrade

– HubDub&#8217-s event derivative prices:

Who will recieve the winning bid to host the 2016 Olympics?

Chicago wont have the Olympics in 2016.

IOC

The Chicago candidacy, which was favored by the prediction markets (and bettors like Ben Shannon), is the one that fared the worst.

I TOLD YOU SO:

&#8220-Will Chicago get the Olympics? Dona€™t bet on it. Too risky.&#8220-

The prediction markets are not able to forecast which country will get the Olympics. The IOC is a close aristocratic group that does not leak information. Hence, it is not possible to aggregate information.

Once again, Ben Shannon made a very bad bet. He should read Midas Oracle more often &#8212-if he wants to avoid personal bankruptcy.

– Once again, we see that the P.R. agents of InTrade and BetFair (who both bragged about being able to predict Chicago) were overselling.

BetFair&#8217-s event derivative prices (on the far right of the chart, you can see that the price went down to zero):

chicago-olympics-betfair

InTrade&#8217-s event derivative prices (on the far right of the chart, you can see that the price went down to zero):

chicago-olympics-intrade

– HubDub&#8217-s event derivative prices:

Who will recieve the winning bid to host the 2016 Olympics?

Ben Shannon on his misguided SELL stock market call delivered just before the stock market rally

No Gravatar

Ben Shannon on his &#8220-SELL&#8221- market call

Previously: Wiser Than The Stock Market &#8212- NOT

UPDATE: Andrew Page + Henry Blodget

Share This:

Wiser Than The Stock Market – NOT

No Gravatar

Ben Shannon (alias &#8220-Jesse Livermore&#8221-, who blogs at &#8220-Wiser Than The Crowd&#8221-) claims on his blog to have an uncanny ability at forecasting the future and profiting from it, whether it is speculating on InTrade&#8217-s prediction markets or on the US stock market. Here is his stock market call from July 10, 2009:

SELL SELL SELL

REALITY CHECK:

The stock market is up about 12% since Ben Shannon&#8217-s &#8220-sell sell sell&#8221- call on July 10th.

Spot the 10th on the chart&#8230- Ben Shannon sold the exact bottom immediately before the rally.

ben-shannon-stock-market

Thanks to Deep Throat for the tip.

UPDATE: Ben Shannon on his &#8220-SELL&#8221- market call

Share This: