Traders.com

Article Thumbnail Editor,
In the July 2011 issue of Stocks & Commodities, Donald Pendergast Jr. wrote about a fully mechanical intraday trading system for gold futures that he called GoldTASCMaster, but he also mentioned an article he wrote on a swing-trading system, and the July 2011 article’s Figure 1 (“The Eldorado Gold System”) seems to be from the other referenced article; is this the case?

Does he intend to do any follow-up articles in the near future on these systems? Has he traded either of these systems successfully?

Thanks for any clarification or additional information that you can provide.

Peter LaBreck
Milan, MI

Article Thumbnail Donald Pendergast’s July 2011 article, “Calling The Tune In The Gold Market,” was an enhancement of one of his earlier articles published in our online publication, Traders.com Advantage (“Gold Futures System Music To The Ears?”, February 4, 2011, www.traders.com). The chart in Figure 1 appears in both articles. Pendergast has not followed up on either system, as he has since developed better systems. These systems were presented as a work in progress to see what would work. He has not traded these systems for his personal account.—Editor

GOLD AND THE EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS

Article Thumbnail Editor,
I do not have or use MetaStock. Is there some way to get the Dow Jones Eurostoxx bank futures (FESB) data to confirm the ideas from Markos Katsanos’ January 2012 article, “Gold And The European Debt Crisis”? If not, I’d suggest a note at the beginning of the article that MetaStock is required for this method.

James A. Olson
Gray, TN

Data for the FESB is available from several data sources. For example, Yahoo! Finance offers the data under the symbol FESB.EX.—Editor

LETTER FROM LONGTIME READER

Editor,
Although your magazine is too technical for me (Larry Williams said it was too technical for him, too, which made me feel better!), I wouldn’t want to be without S&C. The first thing I turn to is the interview. I almost always enjoy — and more important, learn something — from the interview. It semi-amazes me how often I see phrases such as “our trading room” or “somebody in the office” or “we have a nice little group of traders.” Trading is a solo activity, but apparently there are a lot of traders who like to touch bases with others. I don’t even know anybody who is interested in the markets, and whenever I try to get somebody interested in the markets, my effort fails.

The books page is something else I always check out, and have bought several books after reading about them there.

There are articles that I think are gems. Austin Passamonte had one last year (“Straightening The Curves,” June 2011) that I thought was special. In baseball terminology, he simply emphasized the importance of getting those singles and doubles. You don’t have to drive in a lot of runs; just try to “get on base.”

I had a futures account at MF Global. Thank goodness there was only $6,000 in the account, because that’s six grand I’ll never see again. From now on, how much trust do you think I’ll have in my brokerage, no matter who it is?

Wayne Roberts

ERRATA: BUYING THE OPTIMAL MONEYNESS

Article Thumbnail Editor, In my January 2012 article, “Buying The Optimal Moneyness,” I made some drawing mistakes in Figures 2 and 6. Here are the corrections to avoid possible misunderstandings:

Figure 2:

The elasticity of put does not asymptotically fall to -100 when the spot price tends to infinity.
The elasticity of call does not asymptotically fall to zero when the spot price tends to infinity. It asymptotically falls to 1.

Figure 6:

The %theta of call does not asymptotically fall to -100 when the spot price tends to zero.
The %theta of put does not asymptotically fall to -100 when the spot price tends to infinity.

Giorgos Siligardos

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