It all comes down to one metric. The path of least resistance put into context. By context I mean relative to time, price and volume. By path of least resistance I mean market impact, pressure, volatility. At the start, I am skeptic. I try to estimate a probability distribution. According to the strength of the imbalance. I'll get in if I guess the payout to be big enough. Fixed is the SL. The entry and the exit are dynamical. I'll get out if I am stopped out. Or if I expect nothing more, That's worth the risk to let my position exposed to the uncertainty. First, don't be a sucker. I believe it works via negativa. We're messy, built on shaky foundations. Keep it low-level. Easier to bullshit with macro. Know how it works, learn from your errors, don't be fooled. It's a lot of what and how. Again and again ... I am not done yet. No one will ever really know. It's luck. It's skill. It's complex. Let's see. But I think that one has to look for conditionals, That give real information about the probability distribution's moments. That's the setup. Then after comes the "optimization" with the entry. Ps: So, hopefully, you shouldn't see me updating this thread after a quiet day.
Lower than the establishment of life as we know it ? It's low odds according to your knowledge and your capacity of making estimates =P
I used to trade with X_trader. The Trading Technologies's desktop version. Lately, I've switched to the online version (TT platform). But I am going back to X_trader. Because I experience lots of freeze and in addition, the ES margin is 1420$. Well... I've got 1K. But the online version was appealing since I am under linux and it's 0.4$ cheaper in RT commissions. So I am setting up a Windows machine. Again. As I used to have. That's it for the troubles and Platforms. But I am afraid the problems are linked to my internet connection. In average my download speed is around 300KiB/s. I'll see how X_trader behave.