Look at your past winnings. Usually not the biggest one you made a killing in, but the 2nd/3rd biggest one. Build your strategy on it. My 2 cents...
So many complain about something the market is doing and they don't trade it, low/high volatility, big bars-small bars, extremes high/low, slippage, HFT, and on and on and on. Or I hear the market is making odd price action, that and HFT I just laugh when I read it. Why not overcoming all your weaknesses, just like all have favorite signals, they didn't pop out flagging you down, you had or should have done much back testing to discover if the were good, same with areas you don't like.
The first millionaire I knew as a friend… when I met him his carpet had a 2 foot wide path worn through the carpet from the front door to the kitchen. You could see the cement floor under it. His wife would trim the edges with a scissors. He was putting every penny in the market because he was multiplying them. When he had enough that he could put it mostly into municipalities… and live (relatively) risk free on the interest alone…. Which at that time required about 2 million dollars… he retired from investing and somewhere in there... at that time... had enough to replace his carpet with a new one. Those where his priorities and strategies. They worked for him. “Live below your means…” He still inspires me to do a little better on that one!
"Father And Son" It's not time to hurry Just relax, take it easy You're still young, that's your fault There's so much you have to know Find a grail, understanding the grail, waiting for the grail, trading the grail If you want you can marry to the market Look at Redneck, Handle123, ETcallHome, J_smith, they're old(?) but they're happy They were once like you are now, and They know that it's not easy To be calm when you've found something going on But take your time, think a lot Why, think of everything you've got For you will still be here tomorrow, but your account may not ... [Father] It's not time to hurry Just sit down, take it slowly You're still young, that's your fault There's so much you have to go through Find a grail, understanding the grail, waiting for the grail, trading the grail If you want you can marry to the market Look at Redneck, Handle123, ETcallHome, J_smith, they're old(?) but they're happy p.s. Before I took the quantitative measure (e.g. regression of price return on volume etc), I wasnot able to anticipate the next bar pattern, all I relied on was price action which I learned from some books and ET threads. But after I got statistically significant results (at 1%) from my quantitative measure, my skill has improved, and I can now interpret the chart way better. I am intending to take further and deeper research whenever I have spare time. so the quantitative approach is definitely the one you want to look into.
Its easy. Have a never-ending quest daily or weekly for a stock that has recently come into high volatility for whatever reason, has lots of buzz in social media, figure out how the masses are going to play it, and do the exact opposite. "Near-term,.... stocks will always move in the general direction that make the most amount of traders lose the most amount of money". -vz
The old idea of making your own profitable system is too hard for most people. So ? Tag along with a winner or buy a system that is profitable and use it.
This makes my day and has taken the words right out of my mouth. The only point I will add is to be flexible and have an edge,flexibility is sure a good trait for success. For novice traders please dont ignore Eskiller's post.