Here is another brilliant explanation by No Doji. There is a bear flag and down trend. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=220303&perpage=10&pagenumber=3
Already posted it in Brooks thread today, but definitely suits the topic. How much simpler can trading be?
everyone is king here..picking setups on data from the past..show me 100(1000 is better) of your 6 buttocks setups and prove that 70% of them are profitable trades. i don't care,if it's on paper only. Thank you!
Right. If you're going to call something high probability, either (a) Provide 100% mechanical rules to backtest it. Of course, that makes is subject to curve-fitting, but at least there are clear rules. Experienced mechanical traders can often sniff out curve-fitting (or find it through parameter sensitivity testing, etc.). (b) Do a real-time journal and call a statistically-significant number of live trades--entries and exits. Otherwise, the term "high probability" is meaningless.
I agree that calling something "high probability" without the reason is not the way to go and that calling enough live trades is necessary if one really wants to prove that. But disagree that it has to be purely mechanical and possible to be mechanically backtested. Many great trading approaches are very hard to backtest and forward testing (aka calling live trades) is much more objective anyway.
That's what my (b) was about. So until we see hundreds of trades called across different market conditions, no one should be making such claims.
Well, OP started this thread not for the purpose of really sharing some trading setups, if I guess right, but for the very different purpose, derived from him participating in a thread about Brooks's books. BTW, I see no professional reason in emphasizing at all if some setup is "high probability" or not, because it's not the hit rate, which is the key component of successful trading.