This thread shows that most people have not thought through the opportunity very well. Probably you family background and lack of education handicap you seriously. Those who are educated are handicapped for other reasons. How they learned was poorly orchestrated. I don't share any of your beliefs nor do I have any handicaps; everything worked out for me. I go in at open on the current correct side of the market. Usually my % on the accounts that are linked to my master account reads 94%. I exit the markets when the day margin ends and the overnight margin begins. The powers that be double the margin requirement for their reasons. I spend my time monitoring and analyzing staying on the correct side of the market. I trade on a fractal that is interlockingly nested into all the separate fractals of the markets (from the finest granularity on up). Each and every trend segment of profits goes through but one Order of Events. Certainly, there is a flavor for each segment that depends upon the degree of rationality (or mostly irrationality) of the Cohan types of the world. Time magazine picked 100 people in various categories to recognize their prowess or outstating traits. In finance, Andrew Lo made the cut for his clairvoyant (humor to me) statement: "buying and holding doesn't work anymore." His comment is just like your comments. So what? Time's owner let his financial editor and magazine editor let that trite commentary through the cracks. My view is supported in many ways and few or none of you have considered just where the precepts of flawless trading get their extremely valuable support. I trade all day and I'm in the market all day and I'm on the correct side of the market all the time. I carve the turns. I can trade at five times the market's evident capacity. My mind is fully differentiated with respect to how the market works and how to take the full offer of the markets. Money is made through price change and the sentiment of the market dictates the market's direction segment by segment. All trends in markets are derfined by their successful completion of their Order Of Events (and there is only one OOE). Trends must overlap and the beginnig and end of the overlap is precisely defined. The market dictates the mathematics that must be used; this dictated fact comes from one specific source. All variables of the markets are granular and and every value in markets is usually a multiple of this piece that is the smallest piece for the variable. I deduced how the markets must work and that is how they actually work. Anyone can prove I am correct; no one can prove I am wrong. As you would expect for anyone who offers an alternative, I can prove you wrong. Others have critqued the thems and coments in the thread. Some also said they wouldn't bother to straighten out those who are presistently incorrect. They understand the futility of trying to explain to a person who is wrong, how he could go about learning what to know to be correct. Also look up the definition of envy and avoid being envious.
I have had 13 losers in a row and lived to tell about it. The key was risk was kept constant, not over leveraged. As I said to each his own and in trading there are more than 1000 ways to skin a cat, but for me the strict RR focus is pretty much all that works. Just my personal holy grail, as they say.
Lights - did you end up following the approach you recommended in this thread? How did the experiment of taking only the choicest of trades in real forward testing pan out actually?