a big bar is always followed by another big bar..that's price action 101 for ya. put that in your holster
1000% right.. I've done this almost a decade ago..i don't have to sit on front of my setup. in fact-i'm using old baby alert thingy from 90's while i'm taking the nap,working on new systems,exersise or taking some tan outside... don't know who this guy Altucher is.... never heard of him...james...you should read our conversations with crgarcia..here, on ET...maybe you would learn that some people do make money daytrading... some of them do make money every single day,week,month...in fact-i do have system,which does exactly what you describe in the link-free to go with 1-2K PnL in 15 min after market open(unfortunately not every day)...see my calls in same threads....if you can't do that -it doesn't mean that nobody else can't..
overeat...dumbshit...20+ years later my weight is exactly same where it it was,before i join the army @ 19...trading is not a fucking gambling mister altucher..if you ever trade for living-you should know that..it's all about good,statistically proven trading plan and control of your emotions..if you can't control your eating habits-fuck off..stay away from trading,loser...and don't tell me what to do..
"it's all about good,statistically proven trading plan and control of your emotions.. so is poker well done, picking horses, pro sports bets and a good roulette system. what is gambling?
Well, I promise I will never tell you what to do. But lets look at what has consistently made money over the past 20 years. Two approaches: A) Hold forever. Buffett, Gates, etc held their shares of their companies forever and made billions (I dont know any billionaire daytraders. Not even Stevie Cohen, who made his money from fees) B) Trade super high frequency, a la Goldman Sachs. Most people in the 99% in the middle lost money. Daytraders, investors, etc.
The other day I was in a meeting. I had introduced a good quant fund to a billionaire family famous for funding startup hedge funds. I was the guy in the middle. The one thing both sides agreed on with all knowing smiles is "the game is rigged". Everyone knows it. Its just a matter each year of figuring out the best ways to take advantage of the particular ways the market is rigged that year.
My strategy is a mechanical system integrated with price action, and I don't need bar to bar analysis (only the pattern matters, not the bar), so it is feasible to use sound alert. Bar to bar analysis is an exhausting way to trade the market even though some people are good at it.
Thirty years ago when I first started, I was lucky, very lucky, commissions were so high, you could not day trade, so each Saturday would find me at main library copying down from microfilm old copies of Wall Street Journal so I could then go home and make my own price charts by hand. Took me several Saturdays to be able to get three years worth of data to do those charts, and I started to learn how to chart, learning about price action. I have all night to think whether to place a trade the next morning for a long term trade. I found I could risk a little and look to make 12 to 30 times what I had to risk. Not much has changed as far as risk to reward for long term trading except brokerage has big time going from $125 per hundred to 26 cents and speed. Trading long term commodities is also very very good risk to reward. But day trading is not good for the average Joe, Commissions are huge for retail trader, risk to reward is lousy. If you do ten trades a day, the risk is generally more than your profits and that is if you a profitable day trader which most are not. Most are unbelievable undercapitalized, under educated of price action, dream of grandeur, don't have a clue about the years of dedication required to get good enough to become a Breakeven trader. then more years to learn the nuances of trading. Day trading will bring out every lousy emotion that is within you. After spending thousands of hours and having more losing trades, you might rub Budda's stomach in the morning, wear your lucky socks, put on your underwear backwards just cause yesterday you made 13 bucks, but that is not going to bring you to the promise land. You have to spend a couple years of screen time, have a well backtested set of ideas, preferable a mentor who will not charge you for the experience, and learn patience. The patience to wait, the patience to accept. Price is really not what you think you see when you look at your screen, they are people's ideas and many traders who are emotional staring at other people's emotions are most likely to lose. Markets that trend hard in one direction are traders getting in to enter, traders getting out to exit, and traders reversing so as not to miss the move. You first get "fear of maybe it will work and maybe it won't," then fear of "oh crap I got to get out of my losing position," then there is "I better reverse so I don't miss the move." We have all been there. If it wasn't for my long term commodity trading doing well, I would have not given so many years to figure out how to day trade. Long term you have to accept losing more trades than winning trades, but cause of the higher reward to risk, acceptable way of trading, so even at 35% winning trades, you can have nice years of return, but in day trading you really need max 25% or less of losing trades cause the reward to risk is much less and high retail commissions. And for those who say they don't have much money for longer term, after spending a couple thousand hours studying price, two years of screen time, going thru half dozen of accounts and have nothing to show for it, whereas long term you might have made 30% return and have worked and saved money while you continue to study in free time. What am I saying, I shouldn't be saying this, I need fresh meat to lose their money, YEAH day trading is a breeze, be out there on beach taking in the rays, Dude.
I think James is 100% correct. A daytrader is just a discretionary market maker and HFTs are automated market makers. Buy and hold profitable companies is the only other way to make money in the market other than market making. I wouldn't wish a career as a discretionary market maker upon anyone. Right now my # 1 goal is to regularly invest all profits from market making into a buy and hold strategy.