Ed's FAQ APR 01-30, 2022

Contributors Say	Ed Says
April 30, 2022 Whipsaw Wake-Up Dear Mr. Seykota, I enjoy listening to your Whipsaw Song every morning as my wake-up alarm. It is very inspiring and helpful. Thank you so much.	Thank you for acknowledging me, the band and the work.
April 21, 2022 Pythagoras and the 39th Day Dear Ed, Pythagoras was a figure somewhere between a layman and Christianity. The number 39 (which is also in Govopoly in the 39th Day) is an important number referable to Pythagoras and also to the Irish Christianity, the one connected not to the mystery of the faith but to the intellectual and speculative one. In Govopoly (in the last pages) you put the accent on "Eventually, the system itself falls apart, providing an opportunity for a new start", then you published "The course of empire" by Thomas Cole putting the 39th Day between "consummation" and "destruction", before "desolation", and then (as throughout the book) you recall the concepts of "accept" and "adapt". I remember also some passages written by Jay Forrester : "The human population would have been growing until reaching the resource limits, and then stay there, kept in check by famines and epidemics.", Forrester himself prepared a complete study with the title "World Dynamics" that was published in 1971. In his remarkable opinion, civilization was to overshoot the limits and keep growing, only to crash down, badly, afterward. The problem was not just that of a fair distribution of the available resources, but to avoid the collapse of the whole human civilization. The calculations showed that it was possible, but that it required stopping economic growth. It seems at this point that your model in Govopoly could be inspired to “World Dynamics” by Jay Forrester, and that the 39th Day could be also based on the studies of Pythagoras. The principle of bíos pythagorikós (pythagorean life) are rules and precepts of how to face life and everyday life according to the philosopher of Samos. The Pythagorean way of life contains nu Dear Ed, Pythagoras was a figure somewhere between a layman and Christianity. The number 39 (which is also in Govopoly in the 39th Day) is an important number referable to Pythagoras and also to the Irish Christianity, the one connected not to the mystery of the faith but to the intellectual and speculative one. In Govopoly (in the last pages) you put the accent on "Eventually, the system itself falls apart, providing an opportunity for a new start", then you published "The course of empire" by Thomas Cole putting the 39th Day between "consummation" and "destruction", before "desolation", and then (as throughout the book) you recall the concepts of "accept" and "adapt". I remember also some passages written by Jay Forrester : "The human population would have been growing until reaching the resource limits, and then stay there, kept in check by famines and epidemics.", Forrester himself prepared a complete study with the title "World Dynamics" that was published in 1971. In his remarkable opinion, civilization was to overshoot the limits and keep growing, only to crash down, badly, afterward. The problem was not just that of a fair distribution of the available resources, but to avoid the collapse of the whole human civilization. The calculations showed that it was possible, but that it required stopping economic growth. It seems at this point that your model in Govopoly could be inspired to “World Dynamics” by Jay Forrester, and that the 39th Day could be also based on the studies of Pythagoras. The principle of bíos pythagorikós (pythagorean life) are rules and precepts of how to face life and everyday life according to the philosopher of Samos. The Pythagorean way of life contains numerous rules, mostly centered on the condition of "purity". In the bíos pythagorikós appears for the first time the prohibition to have extramarital relations. But fundamental for the bíos pythagorikós are the food rules. First of all Pythagoreans were careful not to eat beans, avoiding even the simple contact. There are two different interpretations about this. The one of Gerald Hart, according to which favism was a very common disease in the area of Crotone ; the one of Claude Lévi-Strauss, according to which broad beans were considered connected to the world of the dead, of decomposition and impurity, from which the philosopher should keep away. Also Pythagoras is traditionally considered the founder of vegetarianism in the West, Ovid tells us about him in his Metamorphosis, associating his vegetarianism to the belief in metempsychosis, according to which in animals there is a soul not different from the one of human beings. Diogenes Laertius also argues that Pythagoras used to eat bread and honey in the morning and raw vegetables in the evening, in addition to begging fishermen to throw back into the sea what they had just caught. As for ethics, Pythagoreans, following the doctrine of harmony, defined justice as a square number (which is obtained by multiplying X by itself). Justice is represented as a square, whose surface is calculated by multiplying the side by itself. In this way the concept of justice is rendered as a complete and limited geometric figure, with equal angles and sides, in order to emphasize its value of reciprocity and harmony : infact justice is obtained by rewarding equal merits with equal rewards and punishing equal faults with equal punishments. It is connected to Pythagoreanism the doctrine of encephalocentrism, which replaces that of cardiocentrism. This doctrine will have great success in modern biology. The organ of the spiritual life of man is therefore the brain and not the heart. Pythagoreanism had a decisive influence on later philosophy. In particular, the history of the effects concerns above all the scientific foundation of mathematics. That is, mathematics loses its practical "orientalising" character, becoming a hermeneutic code of reality. Nature expresses itself mathematically, therefore, in order to understand it, it is necessary to know the language of mathematics. Modern science will be based on this intuition. I would like to know your opinion on this subject, and especially if the number 39 used in Govopoly really has a correlation with Pythagoras. I wish you healthy and happy ! Veronicamerous rules, mostly centered on the condition of "purity". In the bíos pythagorikós appears for the first time the prohibition to have extramarital relations. But fundamental for the bíos pythagorikós are the food rules. First of all Pythagoreans were careful not to eat beans, avoiding even the simple contact. There are two different interpretations about this. The one of Gerald Hart, according to which favism was a very common disease in the area of Crotone ; the one of Claude Lévi-Strauss, according to which broad beans were considered connected to the world of the dead, of decomposition and impurity, from which the philosopher should keep away. Also Pythagoras is traditionally considered the founder of vegetarianism in the West, Ovid tells us about him in his Metamorphosis, associating his vegetarianism to the belief in metempsychosis, according to which in animals there is a soul not different from the one of human beings. Diogenes Laertius also argues that Pythagoras used to eat bread and honey in the morning and raw vegetables in the evening, in addition to begging fishermen to throw back into the sea what they had just caught. As for ethics, Pythagoreans, following the doctrine of harmony, defined justice as a square number (which is obtained by multiplying X by itself). Justice is represented as a square, whose surface is calculated by multiplying the side by itself. In this way the concept of justice is rendered as a complete and limited geometric figure, with equal angles and sides, in order to emphasize its value of reciprocity and harmony : infact justice is obtained by rewarding equal merits with equal rewards and punishing equal faults with equal punishments. It is connected to Pythagoreanism the doctrine of encephalocentrism, which replaces that of cardiocentrism. This doctrine will have great success in modern biology. The organ of the spiritual life of man is therefore the brain and not the heart. Pythagoreanism had a decisive influence on later philosophy. In particular, the history of the effects concerns above all the scientific foundation of mathematics. That is, mathematics loses its practical "orientalising" character, becoming a hermeneutic code of reality. Nature expresses itself mathematically, therefore, in order to understand it, it is necessary to know the language of mathematics. Modern science will be based on this intuition. I would like to know your opinion on this subject, and especially if the number 39 used in Govopoly really has a correlation with Pythagoras. I wish you healthy and happy !	Thank you for expressing your thoughts about Pythagoras and the 39th Day. You state, Nature expresses itself mathematically. You might consider that, to a musician, nature expresses herself musically; to a honey bee nature expresses herself as flowers; to a mathematician, nature also expresses herself. You might consider taking your feelings about [feelings] to Tribe.
Apr 18, 2022 Final Thesis Dear Ed, this email contains my recently written final thesis of my bachelor degree in economics at the Georg Auguts University Göttingen. I have just recently sent you my first hot seat report. As the markets are my primary field of interest my grades are really bad but within the theses i was relatively free to express my original thoughts as i do not have to care about my grades anymore. Now I know, as you are one of my partial gurus (lol) (amongst others like George Soros or Mark Minervini or Tiger Woods), that you are a busy man with important tasks at hand and as I am quite thankful for all the crazy circumstances that lead to me being a Tribe member in the first place you can easliy skip this mail right here and just call it a day but, I really wanted to send you the theses, it is about Dollar money markets and mostly based on Joseph Wangs Central banbking 101 and Marcia Stigums famous book. I also added some humor and many personal opinions but at least tried to act like a "academic". I also provocated my Prof a little bit by claiming that Soros´Theory of Reflexivity is the far greater explanatory model for pretty much everything in econonomics compared to what is offered to me by the teachings and much more. Also, as I just remebered that you post the mailings to your blog as well feel free to publish the theses and the mail there as well. Finally, I want to say this: If you regard it as a occuption of interest to you feel free to read the paper. I have included your name in there as well and cited the Whipsaw song from youtube. Side Note: After having spend 3+ years of thinking 6 or more hours a day about markets i think the Whipsaw Song, which I also just recently was able to fully comprehend and appreciate, pretty much solves 99% of the speculators problems while leaving 1% to the issues of dealing with excel. My father introduced me to the whipsaw song 3 years ago already but, being a young and naive trader, I thought it was bullshit. It is interesting how one must become mature enough to fully understand the great reduction of wisdom that this song and the glorious performance of your band is able to transport. Anyway, another last question and I am somewhat sure for asking so bluntly (or maybe I am not?, not sure myself): What do you think of George Soros especially. I just recently watched a documentary on him that illustrated the hate that global politicans project on him. As far as I can tell (having read the alchemy of finance and other books on him and karl popper as well and taking into account the work he did with his foundation while also recognizing his superior investment results, this man was a great one but I am not sure and seek out information from intelligent people like you (who also know Soros and a bit about finance of which I know few). A quick "Yeah he was cool" or a "Dear Benjamin, Soros is a idiot and you are too" would be very welcomed. Ok, thats it. I hope you are able to appreciate this mess of an email and I especially hope that you are well and able to enjoy your life! Best, - - - - - Excerpt from Thesis: According to Ed Seykota the successful speculators´ job is to “Ride the trend until the end!” (Seykota 2008) but given the fact that the American rise to power has been so overwhelmingly influential and successful over the last century while the fundamentals of that very system seem to slowly but surely deteriorate one must still decide for him- or herself what this “trend” actually is, whether it’s a remaining supremacy of the Dollar or a reflation scenario. Either way, the world economy is surely not going to become a boring topic and as passionate economists that is more than we would ever ask for.	Thank you for sharing your thesis with me. You might consider the extent to which all your knowledge about the markets and about the dollar in particular might bias your view of the trends.
Apr 17, 2022 Book About Feelings I hope you are well. I ran into this book, and I am wondering if you have known this book for some time. Here is a link if you like to listen. Link Hope to see you soon.	Thank you for sending me the link to Feeling is the Secret by Neville Goddard. You might notice his advice to "control" your negative feelings. In TTP we do not judge or distinguish between "good" and "bad" feelings and view them all as important indicators on our emotional dashboard.
Apr 16, 2022 The Best Thing Hello Ed, The best thing I ever did was to meet you. Thank you for all of your teaching and guidance. Have a Happy Easter to you and your family. The price and therefore the charts tell us everything. Kind regards,	thank you for sharing your kind words and for acknowledging the work.
April 8, 2022 Nothing Happens Dear Ed, I have created an account on the TT website but when I press login nothing happens? I would like to reach out and join a Tribe in my local area. At your earliest convenience, would you please check this email address in your database and confirm that my account does indeed exist? Many thanks,	Thank you for telling me about nothing happening. I wonder if you can send me a link to the page that does nothing and what you do to get that result.
Apr 7, 2022 Trading System Project (TSP) Study Hi Ed, Thank you for posting very helpful and educational content in TSP page. It provides some potential and critical study directions for guys like me, I am committed to the design and implementation of an actual trading system, from the ground up. In order to gain the necessary skill to design and implement a trading system, I learn programming by myself in past 2 years, and now I feel my programming skill might be enough and I decide to roll up my sleeves to start my TSP journey. I write a program to create a simple exponential crossover system for simulation and study purpose. Hereby I share some simulation results, along with my findings. A. Simulation Results Confirmation 1. I run 2 simulations that you post on TSP pages, and I get the below simulation results, matching yours in penny. 2. Bliss of Simulation#2 increases 150% over bliss of Simulation#1(as well over bliss of simple buy and hold strategy). This indicates that (1)different lag combination might result in huge performance divergence, and (2)timing might result in great performance improvement compared with simple buy and hold strategy, although in hindsight. B. Steamroller Spread Sheet/Heatmap View I see you post a steamroller spread sheet in website, and I find it is a very good presentation of simulation results comparison of different lag combinations. After some investigation and effort, I add a module in my program that can produce similar output, as below. If anyone finds that steamroller spread sheet on your website is hard to see the texts within it, she/he can refer to below chart. At the same time, I can easily find lots of combinations that provide greater bliss score than simple buy and hold strategy(which is 0.090/year), this confirm my previous hunch and guess. C. The Effect of Heat I wonder how bliss score would change when I adjust the Heat, and I also want to produce something to show this in a dynamic and visual way. So, I produce 2 kinds of animations(since there is max limit for mail size, I post link that can download the animations as below). I think Mountain Profile View animation does a better job to convey and present the effect of Heat, but 2D Heat Map View animation can provide more accurate information on Lags. Let’s imagine that we are walking in the mountain. Below is what I am feeling: (1) Higher heat increases the altitude of mountain, and at the same time, results in a more rugged surface(as well results in a higher adrenaline level in my body); (2) Extremely high heat would turn a plateau into a cliff, increase risk of ruin to almost 100%! How can we make to walk in below mountain safely? I think it is very hard. D. Phenomenon and Pattern High heat configuration might impose a stress testing for system, which indicates that those parameters combinations surviving under high heat setting might be considered potential robust choices. After further inspection, I find that survivor mountain range under high heat shows a pattern of direction (from southwest to northeast), shown as below graphs. It indicates that if we choose a longer SlowLag, we might need to choose a relatively shorter FastLag to keep us staying in robust area(I guess the reason is that shortening FastLag might be more marginally effective to control the downside extent when the SlowLag is relatively long, this effect will result in an improvement in bliss or stability of bliss). I run the same simulation on gold continuous contract, I see the same pattern, as below. I plan to run the same simulation on other instruments to see if this is a general pattern and phenomenon. Above is my TSP study report. I would appreciate any comments you might have. Best Regards!	Thank you for sending me your studies. I wonder if you can send me a version as an HTML page so I can post it to the TSP page without having to do a lot of cut and paste. Thank you for sharing your feelings about navigating your heat map. You might consider creating an animation showing how the peaks and valleys change as you change your parameters. You might also consider taking your feeling about [falling] to Tribe as an entry point.
Apr 6, 2022 Wants to Avoid Whipsaws Hi Ed, Greetings from Germany, hope you are doing well! I have a question regarding our favorite activity; whipsawing! Over years I have refined a trend-following system and recently coded it. It works, however, the impact of whipsawing is still too large. When employing a dithering filter with a MA it enters too late, with an EMA it whipsaws again. Have you any conceptional or practical ideas on how i could try to minimize the impact of whipsawing without comprising too much on other aspects? Any input is highly appreciated! Wish you the best health!	Thank you for raising this issue. Home ownership comes with maintenance expense and taxes; relationships come with conflicts; teeth come with cavities; trend-trading systems come with whipsaws. You might consider taking your feelings about [Whipsaws] to Tribe as an entry point.
Apr 2, 2022 Think-For-Yourself Medicine Hi Ed, Hope all is well. While listening to this fellow's podcasts and watching videos it occurs to me Dr. Tom Cowan is the "Ed Seykota of Medicine", by which I mean over a period of 37+ years he simply observes what actually works, what is logical, demands proof, and is not afraid to publish his conclusions even if they are at odds with the establishment, all delivered with deadpan humor and a humble willingness to be corrected if mistaken. One difference: he has no banjo. Link 1 Link 2 best regards,	Thank you for checking in and for sharing your links and observations. As far as fatal flaws go, playing banjo seems as good as any, better than some.
Apr 2, 2022 Simplicity Hi Ed, I sit down to go through the trading instruments I consider for trading and started to put together the criteria to use for each of them. Out of nowhere I get this thought about what you said in the Market Wizard interview that in order of importance to you are: (1) the long-term trend (2) the current chart pattern (3) picking a good spot to buy or sell. I write them down in the Excel sheet, then it hit me that these are the criteria, I don't need anything else. Thank you Ed!	Thank you for sharing your insights.
Apr 1, 2022 Relationships and Trading I love reading what you write about psychology, emotion, finding your calling, generally the insights I find to be extremely thought provoking and put me in a connecting mindset What I love most about the markets is the ability to judge a thought process against the reality of the market. It’s been an exacting teacher. I made $25k into $126k relatively quickly then as my relationship dissolved at the time my account did with it in an inexorable fashion. I don’t know if I did this on purpose out of guilt or if I was just unable to detach the two things. At $2000 dollars I got a hold of it and went to work on the Big Island of Hawaii and live in a cabin. I had to build a solar system for the cabin and realized that my trading and life attitude needed to emulate this system, if I could create a little more than I used at all times, I would compound. I managed to turn to $2k into $70k, using patience in very low float stocks which I figured to be in a certain point of their cycles I then tried to learn day trading, using options. And realized then that I still hadn’t fully accepted the idea of thinking in probabilities. My trading right now is scaled down a long way and I’m reading as many books by the old greats as I can find, Wyckoff, Livermore, Dow, as much to be a student of the market as maybe try to get a more fundamental understanding. I love how Wyckoff writes I’m sorry this is a long waffly email, you surely receive a lot from people looking for more. I wanted to try to ask if the incline village meetings still go on, or if you mentor people at all, if only to share insight. Thank you for taking the time to read this if this reaches you. Thanks for what you have created.	Thank you for raising the issue about relationships and trading. You might consider you trading equity as a quantifiable as a barometer of how you manage your life in general. I plan to host a series of Tribe Meetings in 2023 in Austin Texas.
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