Short Term Trading Weekend Lounge: 14-16 Dec, page-22

hey mate,

just a quick comment regarding everyones fear of 'algos',

i do believe that this fear is a little misguided because it assumes that all these systems are operating long only value/growth/breakout strategies and the waterfall effect that everyone keeps referring to would only be the function of stop losses which is certainly not just algorithmic in nature.  There are plenty of mean reversion/bottom fishing systems/algorithms which would be buying on such weakness which would almost balance out the aforementioned long only stop loss algos effect.  

Listened to a great podcast on the way home from nightshift yesterday morning which was discussing how algorithms are still programmed by humans and often take some of our baggage into them and the fear of the superior algorithm isn't really that imposing once you understand that quite often the person whos programmed it isn't any good.  I probably havent described that very well but i strongly recommend giving it a listen.  it also covers alot of subjects that we've discussed here over the last month or two with bull/bear cycles, bigger market behaviour concepts etc.  You gotta remember, with any type of trading, discretionary, system, algo, HFT etc etc, you need an edge to make any money and if everyone is running the same algorithm then they aren't going to be making any money.

cheers.