A lot of traders fall into: 1. They believe indicators will make trading easier 2. They believe having a certain combo of indicators will unlock "the secret" 3. Many traders push the use of indicators. Newbs see indicators on just about every chart, and think that is the way to trade. Any trading system that is non-conforming, must be unprofitable. 4. 99.9% of trading books talk about their profitable systems, usually with indicators. 5. New traders rarely develop a feel for, and knowledge for market structure because they used indicators for so long. A chart without them is strange, and scary. 6. Similar to 5, traders have a hard time with price action trading because: A) people who claim to be Price action traders tend to also have indicators on their charts as well, further confusing the poor trader, and B) How to trade price action is not clearly defined, and probably never will be. 7. Most traders are attracted to the 1min charts. God forbid should they trade off the 1hr or daily. People are still living in the early 90's, when in reality its anything but. 8. The world of trading is filled with conflicting information, and places like ET make it harder.
23 trades since mid July. Definitely not all winners but its easy to see if this was profitable. Swing trading is definitely easier on the brain and can be a lot more profitable.
Statements like this seem to be typical of this ET board. There is NOTHING AT ALL RANDOM in price movements. Yes, Garcia, I read "Randon Walk..." too. It's TRIPE. When I first learned to program computers in the 60's, one of the first things I did was the production of a set of "random" numbers with which I constructed a hypothetical time series to emulate stock prices. What did it prove? Nothing except that I had learned to make a machine perform a given operation. The numbers were not, in truth, random. They are called, in the computer world, "pseudo-random", because they are NOT RANDOM. Mahiel, or whatever his name is, is dead wrong in his assumptions, and his approach. He obviously doesn't even know what a random number IS. And apparently you don't either. ]As far as your comment that "All frequent traders lose money", that's foolish. I put on trades several times a week, and haven't had a loss of any kind since last June! Idiot!
I DO know the inner workings of brokers and how they recommend daytrading to get more commissions. Nice post. It clearly explains why all tech analysts lose. Nice photoshop skills. You should use it in a real job. Maybe web page or graphic designer? Of course you failed as a computer programmer (to end up as a broker shill on ET), you don't know what randomness is. Even flipping a coin is not "random". But the equilibrium of a flipping coin is so delicate and so dependant on even the slightest physical conditions change, that it's entirely unpredictable. Even your breath may influence the coin flipping. Also remember the coin of the last flip has changed, as it now lost some atoms on its rebound from the floor, etc. All these no losses is BS, as you couldn't prove it with REAL TIME TRADES posts. You can only use your photoshop skills to make believe.
Well I know guys who trade and make in $500,000-$5,000,000 a YEAR These guys are mentored by treasurers of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, RBC, etc and ex-NYSE,CBOE,M/X, TSX traders, so it's possible.. if you have the right mentors backing you up!! If you are trading prop, your % success rate diminishes without a GOOD MENTOR!
Have to agree. In a seminal 1985 paper by Werner De Bondt and Richard Thaler title "Does the Stock Market Overreact?", the researchers concluded in a study of market efficiency that most people tend to overreact to unexpected news events and that "substantial weak form market inefficiencies" were discovered in their analysis. Apperently, MIT also did a study with the same conclusion "inefficiencies in the market caused by overreactions". However I can't find a reference to it. There are lots of studies that show the market are not effiecient due to human behavior. However, I'm too lazy to list them. Human emotions plus leverage = wild market moves. Just like this job http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1941259 Day trading is not for everyone.
Wow, I am truly sorry to hear of your lack of success. I traded for a little over a year and that was nine or so years ago. I was a nivice and I done really well. I used Datek and then Speedtrader. It was sheer luck or my simplistic approach. (I was naive and didn't know it.) I don't think you can do it part time and make any decent money. I also think you need a lot of money to be able to trade carefully. I have been watching these boards to reaccumulate myself with the market. I look at price, volume and a year chart along with a three month chart and a daily chart. I look if the market is up or damn for the day. The three month and yearly chart I loot at once to see if this stock works for me. I also watch the news. Candle stocks work only in hindsight so they are a distraction. Stocks go only two ways, UP & DOWN so off the bat you have a 50/50 chance. With a tight stop loss, how can you loses money? Come January 2011 I will be playing with between 300K & 500K. That gives me the ability to buy and sell more expensive stocks which are less volatile. In closing. KEEP IT SIMPLE.... Know the trading ranges of the stock you trade.