Re: Where can i discuss trading ideas without all the TA crap
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Arbitrage is definitely trading, not investing. The edges tend to be very small, so you usually have to leverage the crap out of them. The goal is for your holding period to be as short as possible. (In contrast, Warren Buffett's favorite holding period is "forever.")
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Yet Buffett has made billions in arbitrage in a variety of categories from merger arbitrage (leveraged) to arbing the relative prices of coffee beans against a specialized equity tender offer.
Investing doesn't necessarily require long holding periods. Arbitrage is a subset of investing that involves finding identical or very similar investments (with similar values) that have significantly different prices and profiting from the situation. Most arbs are short term in nature, but they are still investments, i.e. they have quantifiable values and quantifiable risks.
I would not be surprised if most proprietary trading on wall street is closer to arbitrage than pure trading, i.e. predicting price trends based on technical data.
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