With hindsight and a lot of regret, I couldn't believe I lost all that money in 2016-2017 shorting the market. How stupid of a short bias. This year I finally fixed that disease! Yay! I find it just as easy(if not easier) to go long than short. The entire market has a long bias! I'm learning new long chart patterns. Today I tested a long pattern which in the past I got hurt because I shorted at that spot. But I recognized today that it was part of a long pattern. Made a little. Should have held for a longer time to ride it more. This was just to prove to myself that 1) I could identify it in real time 2) that I could trade it profitably. All part of the learning process. So far, I only found one stable short pattern. There are way many more long patterns. Even in a bear market or a downtrend(even intraday), there are spots to go long and make money. To short and make money you gotta pick your spots very careful and exit careful due to these SPIKES from bottom fishers and dip buyers. What has been your experience? Are you equally PROFITABLE long and short if you were to break down your trades? I would think most people are more profitable long than short given the long bias in the market. Anyhow, I gotta work on my analytics consulting now. Working from home and got a delieverable to hit. Just watching market and trading very infrequently today. hehe
I tend to get more trade-able long signals in a bullish environment and vice versa but as a day trader, I get plenty of both. Win to lose percentage is statistically even regardless of direction. I have a mild bias toward shorts as I find them quicker moving, fear stronger than greed possibly. Starting out years ago, I had the typical novices aversion to shorting...that has long since passed and I just take my signals.
Day trading, or intraday, it shouldn't generally matter if you have a long bias or short bias...it's kind of completely irrelevant. A trader should be completely open-minded, and neutral and objective in their observations and approach and wisdom and tactics. What are you trading? What time frame objective end goal are you looking at? It's important you completely analyze all the potential fixed and dynamic variables within that trading game block. Vague, blanket trading advice is kind of useless -- it's vital you dissect your unique trade situation on a case-by-case basis. But more importantly, it's 2018...Make Trading and Your Life Great Again...High-Five`
Sure, there is a long bias in the market, but its incredibly hard to convince traders to be long in a long-term bull market. So while there's a long bias in the market, there's a short bias in retail traders. They keep going short until they've gone broke.
I was talking specifically index futures. If you are talking the entire market then yes there is always something going down even when the market goes up. This is kind of the crux of the discussion below between wide vs deep: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/better-to-be-wide-or-deep.319763/ Having said that, I recognize there are still pockets of opportunities to go short even on an up day. Just harder swimming upstream..
Within 1-2%, overall, anyway (at least for the periods for which I have reliable figures available, but that's a long time, now). I would think that must be true of people trading indices and index-derivatives who are holding their trades open for any significant durations, yes. I wouldn't think it applies to scalpers, semi-scalpers, forex-traders, and some other groups?
That's a pretty amazing stats! Your longs and shorts are pretty much equally profitable. I figure given the last few years of strong bull market upward trend, most people's profits would be on the long side. And their losses would be on the short side(like mine was). I guess if you are micro-scalping then it may not matter....