[themodelplumber]

That's pretty cool if it helps, more for the (already impossibly gigantic) analysis tools pile.

It's too bad that prediction is functionally overrated in trading anyway, and the overrating is even worse when it's being done by beginners.

Everybody wants an edge on the future, but few can hold a really solid trading plan together over a significant amount of time. Especially when they've already even blown up an account, etc.

You can make a pretty good argument that things like emotional dynamics and emotional leverage at a personal level are at least as important as prediction, but maybe more if you consider that you can find a reasonable predictive model built on something as valid as mean regression after a minute's searching around.

The experiences shared in the _Wizards_ books are pretty remarkable in this way.

[beagle3]

Some of the best performing funds (e.g. RenTec Medallion) use prediction. It is not overrated. Just incredibly hard to get right.

[themodelplumber]

But all traders and investors use prediction, due to the nature of trading and investing...do you mean some specific form of prediction?

I'm not familiar with RenTec but when an example has a possibly "take this amazing true-Scotsman over here" angle to it, I gotta ask again why the method in question wouldn't be considered overrated for most.

Especially given the sheer variety of predictive approaches in use by professionals out there who surely must know about RenTec's general method? Is it a specification that's different? Do others expect even higher returns over a shorter timeline? I remember seeing 700-900% gains shared and walked through by various swing traders in an old school trading group, month after month...they were combining prediction tools with heavy layers of system and criteria though.

[beagle3]

"Prediction is hard -- especially predicting the future". (don't remember origin of this sentence).

Very little is actually known about what RenTec is doing. They claim to use "the simplest tools in a smart way" in interviews, with linear regression/prediction being the most useful - but I take that to be disinformation.

No one who has a working predictive model for the market will disclose it - doing that guarantees they will stop making money shortly. But making any money consistently means you have a useful prediction of the future, even if those are not the terms you use to describe it. Cover & Thomas ("Elements of Information Theory") has a chapter or two proving the equivalence between being able to profit and having "more information about the future" than other market participants, in a well defined, quantified way.