I'm not at all convinced most people do that. There are many more ways to fail at trading than to succeed, and it's easy to say it's primarily because of this or that but where's the empirical data?
I've seen momentum ignition work as a trading strategy. I've seen trend following work on a longer time frame. I've never met a professional trader who successfully used intra-day trend following as a trading strategy. Maybe that stuff works in stocks. Haven't seen it in futures. At least not consistently enough to warrant throwing large size at it. Given the type of crowd who continually promotes it - I'm skeptical.
I have done the work. I haven't come across many people who can come up with names. So, my count has just gone up 1. This is real data.
Understandable. Trend following is an umbrella concept that covers a great many strategies, most of them failures. No surprise that no one has gifted you with a consistently profitable intraday strategy, those are very valuable items.
Another reason strategies work: your counterparty isn't or can't be 100percent profit oriented on the same risk factors you are.
Trend following is okay intraday, just really short trends, you have to allow for noise and take advantage of. Have to vary the trend used depending on the strength of the market. Oil and gbpaud are trending well today strong in deed.
Why do NON-strategies make money? Because markets go up and up and up over 10, 20, 30-years and right now your 401k is likely making a ton of cash. Because 'strategies' is a made-up word for people who think they can outsmart the money. The term "strategies" originated from the latin word "sucker". Listen, idiots always want to buy-into some strategy so they can seem smart, then lose money and blame the strategy. The 90% that lose all think they have some strategy. So, invest, get rich, and use your discretionary money to do something more productive.
I've seen a day trader that makes consistent money based on news analysis & technical analysis (maybe it's trend following) on US & Canadian stock markets. Those analysis are hard to quantify, in fact, that guy often post his analysis and the trades after markets, trying to teach other people what he's thinking & doing. But it seems no one can copy what he's doing. I think the credibility is high since he's been posting things like these for several years (along with his pnl records from some prop shops). On average he makes 50-80K/mo, or 600k-1M/year. That's quite impressive for a day trader I think. I can't make money on pure technical analysis, which I've tried years ago. I think one of the key to his success is in the news.