Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Lateral thought and the speed of light

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono in the book New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking published in 1967; it refers to solving problems through an indirect and creative approach. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
Thinking outside the box (sometimes erroneously called "thinking out of the box" or "thinking outside the square") is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking. This is sometimes called a process of lateral thought.
I got this inquiry on Sunday from someone who has crossed paths with me before.  What follows is my public response.
....how long you've been using [your trend following system], what are the results and has it been consistent?
A reasonable, traditional inquiry, but a complete answer would take me some time, going back over all of my blogs, figuring out exactly when I started using it, then running a back test on hundreds of symbols I cover in the service, plus a back test on any symbol I've blogged, computing all the results and then reporting it with six pages of disclaimers about hypothetical results.  The antithesis of my body of work. 

Trust is something that doesn't come from statistics.  It comes from five years of publishing a free public blog, sharing the triumphs and failures of trading out loud, living out loud, stocks, women, the Red Wings, it's all there.  You either trust me or you don't. 

Oh, one more thing.  Back in 2006, when I was pounding the table to buy NNVC at 10c a share, this particular person responded with unbridled skepticism, going so far as to call NNVC snake oil and calling into question the integrity of management.  So here he is again, asking for facts, figures and statistical analysis.

Its not that his questions are out of line, its that he just doesn't get lateral thought.  Most of my readers and subscribers do understand the concept of lateral thought, thinking outside of the box if you will.  It is something you are born with, or not.  A big part of this is intuition, does some path feel right?  The path that NNVC was on in 2006 passed this test big time, yet with only two employees and an idea, traditional analysis would yield nothing but skepticism.

The Trend Models follow a similar path.  I get a sense from all of these charts from all of these past months, that this is the way to go, right here, right now in the markets.

You want proof?
...here's the one who's thinking of her
There's the one who sometimes calls
There's the one who writes her letters
With his facts and figures scrawl
....
 You're either on the bus, or off the bus.  I've posted enough charts and tables here over the past six months to establish the integrity of the trend following using an average-true-range defined trend line.  You're either on the same side of the line, same side of the trend, or not.  It's called lateral thought, it created a trading system here, the same process was instrumental in creating Einstein's Theory of Relativity close to a century ago.  No facts and figures scrawl can make a case for something that just feels right, especially in light of profitable trade after profitable trade.

The Theory of Relativity, proposed by the Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in the early part of the 20th century, is one of the most significant scientific advances of our time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, his major contribution was the recognition that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and an absolute physical boundary for motion. This does not have a major impact on a person's day-to-day life since we travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects travelling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from the point of view of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous equation, E = mc2, which reveals the equivalence of mass and energy.

A

6 comments:

gary said...

Bravo Allan!!!

t said...

That's right....

Anonymous said...

cf. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions c. 1962. Add to this de Bono as a way to attempt to become perceptually inter-paradigmatic.

et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt - Jn 1:5


Mozart Clarinet Concerto

A said...

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1)

Anonymous said...

J.C. was the ultimate Black Swan...ride on Allan, you've got it right. "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
John 8:35-37

M.W.

A said...

He seems to be completely unreceptive.
The tests I gave him show no sense at all.
His eyes react to light the dials detect it.
He hears but cannot answer to your call.

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.