Special Post – My Challenge to “Watson”
ByNote: Please turn UP your audio volume for the start of the video below so you can hear the referenced clip.
Tonight, I was “floored” by a few excerpts from the recent production “Floored” addressing the inability for human traders to compete against computers and alogorithms.
As I’ve stated throughout the last decade – and proven through actual long-term performance, countless live trading efforts, and now - the Trading After Dark effort (including Episode 3 released yesterday) – such a perspective is beyond lame and is simply DEAD WRONG.
And so, like a few years ago, I’ve put yet another industry challenge out there to dispel this notion.
Yet unlike the recent Watson vs. human Jeopardy challenge, I don’t expect to lose.
Seems to me we’ve been down this road before (see paragraph 5 of the attached).
Kudos Mr Miller. I will take a punt and suggest no-one will take up your offer.
Would be great to see such a showdown. I think you should not only advertise it through your blog
Cheers,
Markus
Don, If your serious, I have a black box that is pretty darn good. It’s 100% mechanical and can be automated (though I still place orders manually). It’s proprietary but I certainly would be game to compare it’s results with yours on any given day.
While I don’t have the resources that IBM put into Watson, I do have a lot of knowledge/experience and a very robust software application. If I can do it, IBM with their resources could do some serious damage.
Ahahahaha. You could have stopped that video by the 45-second mark, and no words were needed to show what you were thinking.
I try my best to hold my tongue on such things. There’s simply very little upside to countering such beliefs when the person has their mind made up. I fell off the wagon the other week though when a guy with some fancy financial degrees from 30 years ago kept telling me how no one can predict/make money in the market short-term. I considered pointing him to your blog, but he was quite rude.
I agree with the main point of your post, that it is foolish to say the market can’t consistently be beaten in the short term just because some people can’t do it — and yet others, notably you, can.
Still, it is worth noting that there are black box algorithms that rival even your stellar record. Renaissance Technologies Medallion fund is said to be totally algorithmic and has compounded 40+% annually for 17 years on over a $1B of capital (with investors being forced to accept large amounts of capital returned in order to keep fund size manageable).
Oh, there’s no doubt that some are effective … and provide a viable trading alternative for some. That can’t be disputed.
My point of course was that computer and human trading aren’t mutually exclusive, and poor performance in one sector can’t be blamed on the other.
hi don-
here is what i was told about life a long time ago -
excuses are tools of incompetence-
people that are good at excuses are seldom good at anything else-
inregards to the challenge -is it for percentage of return or dollar amout returned-
thanks challupa
hi Don – monday had a watson experience-took a 3 point max loss hit in a millisecond -hard to believe but it happened -i knew something was not right -so i went to smaller positions -happened 2nd time for 2 points -then 3rd time for 2.5 points -these were moves in a millisecond after entering the trade-
friday i found the problem -i use tos charts -and infinity trading platform -the tos chart- when a 1 min candle was formed the last trade listed was 2 MINUTES -past the candle -so if 10:27 candle was building the last trade listed was 10:29-
so i call tos-they tell me the new software they had everyone upgrade over the weekend had a glitch -and i had to go into properties of there down load and remove a file -then it worked fine -i wonder how many people got nailed with this -
I would not mind a gentlemans trading challenge -i believe that it would be good for both parties -as competition is good for the soul -
take care
challupa