# Someone trades for you



## It's Snake Pliskin (5 September 2008)

If you had a person to conduct your trading - buying and selling- by following a strict set of guidelines without making decisions because they have already been made - pre-market, would you feel better and more comfortable by avoiding market action throughout the day?

If so do you think it would hinder performance or would your presence hinder performance?


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## It's Snake Pliskin (6 September 2008)

Noone willing to comment? No?


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## MichaelD (6 September 2008)

I already do exactly this.

I work out the plans for the next day's trading and my wife executes the instructions.

It DRAMATICALLY decreases losses due to non following of trading plans. I can cite literally dozens of;

Wife: "I really wanted to hold/wait/sell, but executed the plan."
Me: "Yeah, I was watching from another room and I also wanted to tell you to break the plan but didn't."

95% of the time executing the plan correctly, especially in intraday time frames, is more profitable. It's very, very rare that the heat of the moment emotional response would have turned out to be the best response.


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## Temjin (7 September 2008)

Yep, the biggest mistake one can make to their trading is to sabotage their own trading plan. Getting someone else to trade or having it fully automated is one way to gain an edge.


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## IFocus (7 September 2008)

It's Snake Pliskin said:


> If you had a person to conduct your trading - buying and selling- by following a strict set of guidelines without making decisions because they have already been made - pre-market, would you feel better and more comfortable by avoiding market action throughout the day?
> 
> If so do you think it would hinder performance or would your presence hinder performance?




I think the question comes from the wrong direction sort of. 

How do you behave or what are your behavioral responses when engaged in the market trading process? Failure to understand this point 1st reason for high rate of failure in trading.

Can you change your behaviors required?  Unlikely for most hence next reason high failure rate. 

If you cannot change to appropriate behaviors what structure will you use as a defense against inappropriate behaviors. This will be to some degree different for everyone.

Snake understanding your own behaviors that cause problems is the starting point then building a structure accordingly to over come them. Again this will be to some degree different for everyone

This maybe as Michael goes about it at one end or at the other end of the scale could be like a trader I know that is pretty much intuitive.

I personally fall to the discretionary side but no intuition what so ever.

I use simple structure to identify market conditions to decide on position sizing and generally only trade with clear trends. Not to many trades this year but my account is up nicely (all be it modestly) for the year to date.

Testing to me is the central part of the whole process and applies fully to any trading method all be it the testing will take on different ways to achieving the same out come.
I see it time over time that good traders test extensively and examine the results closely before putting a single dollar on the line. One of the clear reasons I turned profitable.

Punters throw money at the market then try work out why it failed after wards creating massive bad behaviors as a result. This was my own path a very painful, very long way getting to make consist profits from the market.  

I suspect the fact you ask the question means you already know the answer for yourself at least.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (7 September 2008)

MichaelD said:


> I already do exactly this.
> 
> I work out the plans for the next day's trading and my wife executes the instructions.
> 
> ...




Thanks for the response Michael. 

Interesting that the wife wanted to abandon the rules too.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (7 September 2008)

Temjin said:


> Yep, the biggest mistake one can make to their trading is to sabotage their own trading plan. Getting someone else to trade or having it fully automated is one way to gain an edge.




That's why I posed the question to see what people thought of it as a valid strategy, as opposed to the trader doing the self sabotage thing.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (7 September 2008)

> I think the question comes from the wrong direction sort of.



No it was intentional Ifocus.



> Snake understanding your own behaviors that cause problems is the starting point then building a structure accordingly to over come them. Again this will be to some degree different for everyone



I agree with you. 



> I suspect the fact you ask the question means you already know the answer for yourself at least.



Yes I do , and  I wasn't looking for answers just discussion on the topic for serious consideration as a strategy. 

Thanks for the comments.
Cheers..


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## MichaelD (7 September 2008)

It's Snake Pliskin said:


> Interesting that the wife wanted to abandon the rules too.




Our process defeats self-sabotage at two levels;

1. My wife executes the plan because she knows she'll get;
  a. praise for correct execution, regardless of $ outcome
  b. a talking to for trading errors, even if the bad trade would have given a good $ result

She is now more averse to execution errors than losing money, which is the way we want to be.

2. I get my wife to execute my plans because I am afraid that if I execute I will not ruthlessly execute - particularly in the critical area of immediately cutting losses short when they should be - because I am "an expert".


Had a perfect example a couple of days ago where the plan said "get out now" and the instinct was to hold on and wait (aka hope) for a bounce.

If plan followed - break-even trade.
If instinct followed - 2R loss.

Needless to say we followed the plan and got the best possible exit for the day.

Yet again, proving the wisdom of following our plan.


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## happyjack (7 September 2008)

It's Snake Pliskin said:


> If you had a person to conduct your trading - buying and selling- by following a strict set of guidelines without making decisions because they have already been made - pre-market, would you feel better and more comfortable by avoiding market action throughout the day?
> 
> If so do you think it would hinder performance or would your presence hinder performance?




I think it was Allan Hull who put that theory up, he called it the space monkey, from the old astronaut joke "don't forget to feed the monkey" that is the monkey did everything and the astronaut only had to feed it


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## IFocus (7 September 2008)

MichaelD said:


> Our process defeats self-sabotage at two levels;
> 
> 1. My wife executes the plan because she knows she'll get;
> a. praise for correct execution, regardless of $ outcome
> ...




Great that you got your wife involved in the process


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## kam75 (18 September 2008)

It's Snake Pliskin said:


> If you had a person to conduct your trading - buying and selling- by following a strict set of guidelines without making decisions because they have already been made - pre-market, would you feel better and more comfortable by avoiding market action throughout the day?
> 
> If so do you think it would hinder performance or would your presence hinder performance?




It's best not to make a trading decision during market hours because those decisions will highly likely be based on your emotions.

regards
kam75
____________________________
http://www.sharesmadeeasy.com


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## Johnbo (18 September 2008)

MichaelD said:


> I already do exactly this.
> 
> I work out the plans for the next day's trading and my wife executes the instructions.




Your wife rocks!!

I have to get me a wife who will trade my plan.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (23 September 2008)

Johnbo said:


> Your wife rocks!!
> 
> I have to get me a wife who will trade my plan.




But one that doesn't like shopping.


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## It's Snake Pliskin (23 September 2008)

kam75 said:


> It's best not to make a trading decision during market hours because those decisions will highly likely be based on your emotions.
> 
> regards
> kam75
> ...




Is this based on personal experience or something read in a book?

Regardless, I would like to know what you think of the original question if you could. Thanks.


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## kam75 (13 October 2008)

It's Snake Pliskin said:


> Is this based on personal experience or something read in a book?
> 
> Regardless, I would like to know what you think of the original question if you could. Thanks.




Based on my own experience in the markets.  But everyone is different and different things work for different people.  Therefore asking me what I think of your strategy is irrelevant.  What's far more important is what you think.  Want someone else to gamble with you dough?


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## shulink (18 October 2008)

I would rather trade myself, that way I can have more control. I mean there might be certain guide lines that I didn't think of initially that I want to apply based on the market conditions.


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## MRC & Co (18 October 2008)

Mechanical based system, why not just set stops on a platform like IB with so many conditional orders?

Discretionary system - impossible for somebody to trade for you with greater success.


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