Stock market trading can be challenging. So people are always looking for a short-cut, an easy strategy to invest and trade stocks.

One of the most well-know of these “easy” strategies is the Halloween Cycle.

Because this stock market trading strategy is so well-known, it is worth our investigation. After all, sometimes stock market techniques work for no other reason than a lot of people are trading them. They become self-fulfilling prophecies.

This strategy for trading stocks is about as easy as they come:

Buy the stock market around Halloween (late October, early November) … and then in May, go away.

That’s all there is to it (though surely others have added their own additional rules as people always will).

If you look back enough years, there has been some historic evidence that this may not be a bad strategy. However we must keep in mind several factors:

1. Past performance does not guarantee future results (how many times have
   you heard that?!).
2. Market dynamics change from time to time.

So the question stands:

Is this a good, simple, easy stock market trading strategy you can use without knowing anything else about trading or investing?

Here’s a video where we investigate that question with a few examples from recent history.

Thanks for participating in this discussion and please leave your comments below.

Thank you all for taking the poll in the my last blog post (see the post immediately before this one). At this time over 2,000 people answered each question! That’s amazing and thank you for participating.

The results are clear – about 2/3 of the voters think humans are better traders than computers, and about 2/3 of the voters believe that the wide spread use of automated computer trading is a bad thing.

These results actually surprised me. With the rising popularity of trading “robots” that are marketed so heavily, and purchased so readily, I thought that most people would favor automated, computer trading.

But the response seems to indicate that the majority of us humanoids have a distrust of giving too much power to computers. Perhaps this is part of what made movies such as “2001 Space Odyssey” and “The Matrix” so compelling.

The debate is far from over and will continue to rage on since computerized trading is already firmly entrenched in the trading world.

As I read through the over 30 comments posted by you, I was very impressed with your insights. In fact, they were so good that you didn’t leave me much more to say! But since I’m expected to add to the conversation, here are a few thoughts:

As with many things in life, both sides have some strong points and some weak points. Here are a few of the most significant to me:

Robots (Computers):

• Positive:
• No emotion.
• Trade the rules consistently.
• They don’t get tired of watching the markets.
• Can process a massive amount of information fast, with precision and accuracy.
• Major companies use them successfully.
• Negative:
• Amateurs use them mostly unsuccessfully.
• Technology is not perfect and no program is without errors (“bugs”).
• People still monitor their computerized trading systems and often override them when the draw downs reach their personal emotional pain threshold. Thus they do not completely eliminate the interference of human emotion.
• The history of automated trading is far from perfect.
• They still require human oversight since they can encounter technical problems (loss of power, internet connection, etc.)

Humans:

• Positive:
• Someone who has mastered trading develops a feel and intuition for trading that is beyond even their own conscious mind.
• The human brain is still more powerful and complex than a computer. We still haven’t explored the full depths of the brain and it’s capabilities.
• Negative:
• We get emotionally involved which may lead to breaking the rules.

A few other observations I’d like to add:

• Major companies that trade massive amounts of money do use trading programs, and often use them to a great extent. With the tremendous resources they have at hand, both in the area of talent and capital invested in creating such trading programs, it must be acknowledged that alg0rithmic trading has a tremendous amount of validity.
• On the other hand, most amateur traders who buy trading robots are not successful with them. Such robots are not to be compared to the programs that professionals use. Therefore to say that you should use a robot because the professionals do, is not a completely valid point.
• Computerized trading is not THE final answer to trading success. If the markets were traded completely by computers, without any human traders, there would still be winning computers and losing computers since that is the nature of the market buy/sell dynamic.
• Trading programs definitely have a clear advantage over human traders with regard to trading the rules strictly, without emotion, and also with regard to their ability to access tremendous amounts of data to calculate probability scenarios (thus the reason that computers have been able to out-perform chess masters).
• Experienced traders, who have reached the level of mastery, trade based on factors that they are not even conscious of any more. They have internalized their knowledge of the market to the extent that much of their expertise lies in their unconscious. Thus, unlike the amateur, their intuition is to be trusted. This knowledge, developed through massive experience and putting in their “10,000 hours” is so internalized that they cannot even express it consciously to teach others or program into an algorithmic formula to be replicated through a trading computer.

So there you have it – the final definitive answer!

Has algorithmic trading changed the markets? Yes, absolutely.

Is it good or bad? I don’t think there’s a clear answer to that.

Is it better than human trading? It depends on the computer program and the human trader you’re comparing.

Does my Top Dog Trading method still work in this era where over 1/2 of trading activity in the stock market is made by computers? Yes, because my method simply measures the “Energy” in the market regardless of who makes the trade.

A trend (direction)  is a trend whether it’s created by computer trades or human trades … in a similar way whether a turtle is going East or an cheetah is going East … looking at a compass tell you they are both going East, because East is East regardless of what animal or object is going in that direction.

Thanks for participating in this discussion and please leave your comments below.

Stock market trading, emini trading and Forex day trading, have been taken over by robots!

It’s estimated that more than half of stock market trading is performed by automated computer programs – algorithmic trading that executes orders automatically without human intervention.

The most infamous type of automated trading to come under recent scrutiny is “high frequency trading” in which computers calculate small inefficiencies in the stock market and attempt to take advantage of them quickly before they disappear – often for only a few seconds.

Are the robots taking over the world? After all, money makes the world go ’round, right? … oh, wait, no, that’s supposed to be love!

But I digress.

Hedge funds, pension plans, mutual funds, and large financial institutions are using computer programs to make decisions about when to enter and exit the stock, Forex and futures markets, and also to execute those trades automatically.

The fact that so many of the “big money” players are using automated trading indicates that there may be some validity to it for successful Forex, emini and stock market trading.

On the other hand, there are myriads of trading “robots” offered to retail traders, and most of them see to only disappoint.

• Are computers better traders than humans?
• Can the market really be reduced to a mathematical formula?
• Will a highly skilled professional trader always be able to out-perform a robot in the markets?
• Is the dominance of computer trading a good thing for the world financial markets?

Let’s see what you think!

PLEASE COMPLETE THE POLL BELOW. Simply indicate your opinion on the 2 questions. Also be sure to bookmark this page and come back in a few days after others have voted to see the results of the poll.

ALSO – PLEASE EXPAND ON YOUR THOUGHTS BY LEAVING YOUR SPECIFIC COMMENTS BELOW.

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Below is my newest podcast video!

If you have an iTunes account, log in to iTunes, do a search for “Top Dog Trading” and then click the “SUBCRIBE” button so you get all future podcasts for me … they’re FREE!

Daytrading Forex, stocks and eminis is tough. When you consider that daytrading professionals sometimes intentionally try to take money from amateurs, well that can be infuriating.

Welcome to the topic of “Stop Running” or “Gunning Stops.”

While the topic makes most amateurs mad, it needn’t. All you have to do is calm down and ask a good question (most of life comes down to asking the right questions):

“How can I turn this to my advantage?”

The answer is that while you can’t always avoid having your stops taken out (they’re there to protect you after all), there is a way to turn these lemons into lemonade.

YOU can join the pros in running stops … if you know what to look for (I’m going to show you that in just a moment).

This lesson applies to futures and stock daytrading, Forex day trading, emini trading, stock market trading and emini trading alike.

You can watch for these stop runs and follow the pros as they do it. The video podcast below shows you how:

Please leave your comments below.