Losing Faith

I'm a little disappointed in the BBC, although they will no doubt blame the Press Association who provide their data. Manchester City shots on target v Napoli last night? 11, according to the BBC, trusted around the world, yet two other sites (Guardian Match Stats and 90thminute.com) both agreed that City had just 4 shots on target. So maybe a shot on target from one angle may not be on target from another, and a small difference on a slightly subjective statistic is perhaps understandable, but corners are not subjective. One is either awarded or it isn't, so how come the BBC have 8 corners awarded to Napoli, yet other sites have 9? It's as if someone watching the match dozed off, woke up a few minutes later, and simply made some numbers up. Do these people not realize that these numbers are important. I had to revisit the Chelsea v Bayer Leverkusen (did Bayer Leverkusen have 5 shots on target or 2? - there's a big difference) and Borussia Dortmund v Arsenal (Arsenal 6 shots or 2?) results and re-update the spreadsheet. For the league matches, I use Football Data, but for the UEFA competitions I have to look elsewhere. If anyone has any better, i.e. more accurate, sites as a source for these statistics, please let me know. I can't watch EVERY game!

Centre Court Trading is rapidly becoming one of my favourite reads with two great posts in the last two days. The latest titled Right-Brain Trading is quoting from a book by disgraced ** former trader, and author of Way Of The Turtle, Curtis Faith,

called "Trading From Your Gut". Leaving aside Mr. Faith's fall from grace, what he has to say here, paraphrased by CCT, is interesting:

The trading world is divided into two fairly distinct camps. The largest camp consists of traders who consider trading an art, those who are called discretionary traders. A smaller group consists of traders who use a specific set of rules to make their trading decisions. These traders are known as system traders.

....trading styles generally fall on a continuum between the purely intuitive discretionary trader and the purely rule-oriented system trader.

The best discretionary traders tend to be right-brain dominant, using their intuition to decide when to make trades....... They might describe their approach as having a “knack” for the market or a “feel” for the direction of the market.

..... purist right-brained traders.....often don’t understand exactly why they make certain trades; they just know when a trade feels right. This willingness to relinquish decision making to intuition or gut, characterizes the hard-core right-brain trader.

System traders.... use a rational, systematic process to decide when to make trades......don’t trade on their gut or intuition; they trade using rules and strategies. These traders often think in terms of signals and triggers.....Systems traders will have identified these specific criteria earlier, when they performed their backtesting and historical analyses.

I've touched on this subject before, and it's an interesting topic. If you are purely a system trader, you listen to your spreadsheet and lay Manchester City at 1.36 last night. If you are discretionary, you pile in against the Raiders at half-time because the price feels too short. I'm in two minds about what to make of this...
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** "Randomness of markets is normal. Faith says to get out "if you can". He might as well be sitting at the craps table with that logic. It's the exact type of statement one would expect to hear from a person whose money management firm ended in a permanent CFTC ban. Caution should be taken when listening to this particular ex-Turtle."