Using notepad doesn’t. Using a note taking app that allows you to tag and organize data in a more meaningful way can. But this is marginal. What I’m talking about is understanding what drives returns and where your edge comes from.
If you can't turn a profit trading a chart it shows your inability, not others. Nobody here says that chart based trading is a superior way of trading. Calm down
This is reality. So why do people not work with it? Just asking. But to the OP, the key is know when PA does NOT tell you anything. Or more precisely, what probabilities it is telling you. Combine that 2 second accurate assessment, in real-time, under pressure, with real money, without fatigue, excellent tactical order execution and management, and you MAKE it work. You have to MAKE IT WORK. No Magic. Trading is more like hand to hand combat. All the books and theory are just background. You should know them enough to teach them, but applying the concepts and methods, IN COMBINATION, in real time, artfully, skillfully, is required. You have to be able to do them while high, drunk, over caffeinated, sleepy, irritated, excited, astonished or just bored. You know them so well it makes all the pontificators look pathetic. If you cannot, you are not there yet. There was some poser recently posting about "not trying" or "not thinking" as the "key". You can tell he was a egotistical poser because he forgot the most important part. The reason why you are not thinking-trying, is because it is so deeply burned into your mind you don't have to. He was like some bad version Yoda, thinking he can pose his way into mastery. Master techniques come from years of hard work, not by posing. There is no substitute. PS: I am not exaggerating about being able to assess accurately in 2 second.
People do obvious things along with the rest of the retail mass herd (like buying S1 support). And there are successful apex predator traders and algos that exploit all of these low pain threshold just-doing-the-obvious system copy-cats. There's juice in a market where you have a crowded room filled with anxious pretenders risking scared money and that room has only one very small door. And that's when the algos and big specs pull the fire alarm. Markets are all about pain. That's what I've come to learn over time. And using the default settings on common technical indicators whilst convincing yourself you have an edge is just another herd response. They're a school of baitfish.
This is good comment you stated. This just the normal behavior of someone who makes money trading. People trade because they want to make money. So they will trade in away that "think" will make them money consistently, with ease just like going to work. Markets are all about pain, it is not easy. Us retail traders have to trust and have confidence in what we are doing will make money and be enjoyable, and we have to bet the markets will react positivity in what we are doing for the next X to XX years.
Future price waves are unknown, sometimes indicators correctly coincide and give the illusion of an edge. Can you trade without a stop loss? Investors use options to survive drawdowns.
%% And some use dividends; + different time frames. NO such thing as a business without expences. Good post...............................................................................
Hello bone, Question for you. Where these Edges your friends had from price action, trading patterns, or volume profile, or market profile ,etc type edges? Or were the edges more a glitch in the system or bug? Just trying to understand where they get the edge from.