Hmmph! Sounds like yer starting to develop a trading intuition. That is not something that can ever be taught or described. Work on it, for that will be your best edge methinks.
Thanks. The above is something I've often mentioned to people who get seduced by the appeal of "look, here's support and here's resistance - it's easy!", but it's rarely well received when someone is in the throes of a newly-acquired religious belief. Me being me, I had to find out for myself - and I did, to my own satisfaction (and fortunately, without major losses). But there's something to directional trading - hell, I've watched people do it with futures, day after day, in a forum I was in - and I want to get to a point where I know what the hell I'm doing with it to whatever degree that can be done. Obviously, there are aspects that have some predictive value in a given range - the general positive drift of the market, some degree of reversion to mean in underlyings with solid fundamentals outside of binary events, reactions to price/volume changes, market psychology - and that's where I think the juice is. But I'm not there yet.
I sorta suspected/called it that. I don't know if you remember, but one of my first directional trading experiences, right after I started trading futures, was trading /CL in sim; 80%+ wins over a set of 50 or so trades - easiest money I ever "made" since I started trading. I even tried /NQ and /ES - it worked to a degree, but not like /CL. Man, it was as if I had a telescope into the future. I was killin' it! Did it for three weeks plus, and it was just bang on. Then I tried it live, and... it just evaporated. Hasn't come back since. I'm really bitter about whatever automatic braking system lives in my head that just clamped down on it and refuses to let go.
This probably sounds mean, even though I didn't mean it at all. I don't pay much attention to TA myself, but I recognize sometimes it represents legitimate change in sentiment. What I meant to say was this - and it probably should have been in the "why is obvious" thread: Any tradeable situation is by definition ambiguous - otherwise it would not be tradeable. The only proprietary indicator for a trader is his/her P&L (plus inventory if market-making). If your own proprietary indicator is not looking healthy, need to try something else. If it does - keep chopping wood. Not everything can work for all people - or there would not be a market.
Speaking of futures forum, if by any chance that's futures.io, Big Mike once said that TA not working was settled long ago.
Indeed. I recall a time you and I were on the Skype together and were trying some sim CL trades, trying to scalp it at an off time of night, and it did not go well. It was before the CL crash of last year. Keep those brakes on, and trade what your intuition is telling you. My intuition is a bit on hold, because of the crazy of the last few months. I have no idea WTF is going on at the moment. So many ideas running through my head. But that is pure directional on the futures, not options. Which I just realized that that is the forum I am in, so I shall escape now! You options people are nuts!