If I were you and if I really wanted to learn a skill rather than receive some facile answer that will not help you at all, I'd get my hands on those books I mentioned and start studying those along with a study of the daily and weekly charts of high volume, active stocks showing relative strength to the S&P 500 and an average daily range greater than $3
Read the last 2 because it are nice classics. Used footprint charts for iceberg orders etc years ago, but was not my thing. Found other things more useful, eg logic
Yes, it is breach of a certain price level, but a certain price level in an uptrend. Breach of a price level in a random price context would itself be random, and there would be no justification for going long here rather than short.
My take on Kullamagi's entry criteria(for lack of a better word). He sees a stock that has been in a long period of apathy,no particular direction. Then the stock/company is hit with some great news...great earnings report,drug approval,whatever,spikes up for a day or two,then flags-out over the next several days(or weeks). He hasn't entered but the stock is on his radar. Then if the stock spikes again that's when he suspects a break-out is about to occur so he enters that day. If the break-out doesn't materialize he simply exits the trade.
You can get some solid insight into KK's trading watching the five minutes or so from where this video is cued up: My take on people commenting on KK's method is most have done very little work to understand what he does and how he turned his $9K into $80MM in 10 years. He has really laid it all out there for the world to see, and yet most will not spend the time to watch even 1% of what he has streamed. Just look atr his charts and the annotations and what he has annotated: He does a lot of work on each ticker before it hits his watchlist.
Dan Zanger may be a one hit wonder though, after the dotcom boom where he made $42m you never really hear of his further exploits. Did he lose it all? Or is a billionaire now? No one knows... That being said. I don't think they are risking 1% of their account (Maybe per trade but they have several traders). From my own backtesting risking up to 15% at one time of an account is close to kelly. (Drawdowns are insane, like its common to lose half or even 2/3 of your account). That being said you can choose to risk less than 15%, but 15% is the max I will risk at any time.
I think some of the reasons is that they are some nuances in trading (which add up). Its hard to put into words but a season trader would be able to exploit it while others who just copy trade do not.
During the dot com bubble he turned 10k into 18 million in a couple years, it then took him nearly 20 years to turn that 18 million into 42 million. It's a lot of money but the compound annual growth rate is less that 5%.