The title of this newscientist article caught my eye - “Evolutionary algorithms now surpass human designers.” It has a lot of examples of how EAs (evolutionary algorithms) have made things better and faster than any human:

Pierre Legrand and colleagues at the University of Bordeaux 2, France, developed an evolutionary system to configure the electrodes for cochlear implants. Up to 22 electrodes on the auditory nerve let cochlear implants restore lost hearing, but the voltages and timings of the signals applied to them are highly individual, requiring much adjustment for speech to be audible. Legrand’s team took just one-and-a-half days to configure an optimal pattern for one patient whose doctors had not succeeded in 10 years.

Obviously this is also being used to make money in the stock market. Here’s one example.

I’ve made a calendar archive so you can see posts from past days on WallStreak. It’s on the sidebar right below the Top Ten list.

Polaris, run on an Apple MacBook Pro, is the computer program that played Phil “the Unabomber” Laak in the recent tournament. Polaris has two parts, “the first being a stored memory bank of optimal strategy for poker situations, the second, a routine to study its opponent, understand their style of play, and adjust its own to take advantage.” The second part is the interesting part - a challenge to the intuition of humanity. This is the part that Deep Blue didn’t have and the part that traders should be worried about.

“I literally felt the same feeling that you would have if you beat 500 people in a tournament and won a million dollars,” Laak said after the game, which ended to the sound of whoops and cheers from the watching crowd of hundreds as the humans vanquished the computer. “We won, not by a significant amount, and the bots are closing in.”

Interestingly, though, I think the second “intuitive” part of the program cost Polaris the match:

After 48 hours of play, Polaris tied the first round, won the second and lost the last two. The two losses came after the program switched modes: it played strictly by the odds of hands in the first two rounds, but the last two were played with alternating “personalities” of passive and daring that were switched out between hands.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

I didn’t make many trades today, one with FSLR and one on VSEA. I got a couple of points on FSLR and was shook out of VSEA for a little more than I wanted, but not too bad. I just didn’t see much going on.
But now that I’ve started day trading stocks again, I’ve been posting my complete watchlist every morning to wallstreak. So if you are interested in what I will be trading for the day, you can just click on my wallstreak link to find out.

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

“It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.” - William O’Neil

– Click here for today’s full list –

If you traded quickly, skillfully and/or luckily today, you could’ve made a lot of money as the markets were very volatile. Or you could’ve been chopped to pieces. I was watching the futures pop and drop like crazy, sometimes within minutes. On a big move day like this, it seems like you should be able to catch a nice run - but it really wasn’t easy. There was some discussion about this on wallstreak.
I am proud that I was patient and shorted the ER2 at (what I believe) was the best spot to go short, but I didn’t hold it and only got one point:

Yeah it was choppy and it would’ve been really hard to watch the swings on my P&L, but really I could’ve possibly made 10+ points if I had just sat it out. And the reason it wouldn’t be too crazy to sit this trade out, even with the wild swings, is that I would’ve been in profit the whole time. The best way to trade this, I think, would’ve been to sell half for profit and keep half to run with a breakeven stop.
I really didn’t do much else, it was just moving too wild for me. That was my only futures trade. My biggest winner was a short of HANS right at the open. I also scalped a short of GES and CRDN.