Looking at charts with indicators on them actually makes me a worse trader. Do you ever post live calls with your indicators? I see a lot of really pretty after the fact charts on ET.
I use to do that a lot on the TDA chatrooms to the point a few people in there couldn't trade without me around a year ago... Different identity though. It got too distracting. Plus, they never learned anything... They have absolutely no common sense... "God damnit, when we are topping on the daily you don't step into the hourly buy setups like during a rally!!!" They start trading in a certain way during a rally or selloff and don't realize things have to be done totally differently as market conditions shift.
I agree that timing and backtesting are important in trading, check out for more information in following threads:
Thanks, IntelligentComp for pointing it out, the complete post is as follows: I agree that timing and backtesting are important in trading, check out for more information in following threads: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104393 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108534
There's a certain type of poster at ET that thinks no one ever knew anything about trading until they came along. These posters also seem to think their newfound "knowledge" is universal and applies to any trading methodology. In my own case, a "time stop" would actually be detrimental to my results (I know because I had already done the analysis nearly two years ago), so it's clearly only a "trading secret" for some kinds of approach. Anyway, when I came across this thread earlier, I thought it was the OP's practice attempt at writing a trading newsletter, given the title. I swear I've gotten junk mail that started off "A trading secret only some will understand..."