Play with time frames until you see stairstep patterning. Enter on pullbacks and put stop under/over entry pivot and remember the works of the immortal yogi Berra...."It ain't over 'till it's over."
You have to realize when your're an exception. Most day traders fail. Most day traders have to define if a trend exists...most are trend followers...most try to play support/resistance levels. I don't buy into the reason that most traders fail because they can't follow rules to excellent trade setups. If there's anything to "make" a trader follow rules well, it's having confidence in setups that have proven themselves. The problem is getting the excellent setups in the first place. I'm talking about results that make a living, not "I made 6% return on my trend following this year, so trend following works". Obviously, most everyone is competing at the same TEXTBOOK stuff, no wonder most lose. If this stuff works for you...you probably use something unique or happen to see things uniquely through intuition/experience.
%% Yes i could, JP123; but its more helpful for you to find some 10 year trends. Study that enough you may find some thing profitable. Start with SPY , even if you dont trade it-good benchmark.
For sure, but most traders fail, period? Ok, I acknowledge that a higher proportion of intraday traders fail than traders in general; it would be churlish of me to deny this given that we both know it's true, even if neither of us can really prove it. Yes; probably. No, I'm not sure I do, either. At the very least, it's far more complicated than that, anyway. In my view, there are 5 common reasons which, between them, probably account for well over 95% of all "trader failures", and maybe over 99%. 1. Not having a genuine edge (for which a common reason is reliance on inadequate, defective or mistaken "information": aspiring traders quite commonly seek short-cuts, imagining that if they just copy something that "works", they'll be able to bypass most of the actually-required education and experience phases); 2. Confusing entry-methods with trading systems (for which a common reason is the deeply mistaken - but widely-held - impression that if one enters at a good time, everything else will somehow, magically "work out well" even without specifically considering trade-management subsequent to the entry); 3. Under-capitalisation (for which a common reason is a misguided belief-set about what's typically achievable and over what time-frame: most people significantly overestimate what they can achieve quickly and easily, while significantly underestimating what they could achieve slowly and with difficulty); 4. Excessive position-sizing (for which a common reason is just a general lack of statistical/probabilistic knowledge - most people aren't mathematically gifted, and it's really, really difficult to make a success of trading without some real understanding of the statistics and probabilities involved); 5. Lack of patience, discipline and "psychological aspects" (on which I'm far too Aspergerish to be able or willing to comment further, really). I'm sure this is so, yes. Even with my almost total lack of "psychological insight", I'm certainly not going to argue with that one. I don't think so, really. I strongly suspect most people have read almost no real textbooks by accredited authors, published with peer review by orthodox, mainstream publishers, at all. They've looked at "online information" (of many kinds), perhaps not quite appreciating the huge significance of the lack of quality control of "online information", and perhaps not quite appreciating that in a field of endeavour with such low overall success-rates, broad consensuses are always quite likely to be pretty misguided, especially with discussion participants so often having either a financial or an emotional investment in what they're saying? Lots of experience, now, admittedly. And it did take me for ever. But I have huge patience and discipline, and anyway, whoever managed to make a living at this game without some of that? I don't think we really disagree about much, here, Bonecrusher??
This pretty much hits the nail on the head regarding the few, rare, successful traders. You have to be somewhat unique, and see the light and carve out your very own specialized niche to master and exploit
Good post. When I said "TEXTBOOK stuff", I meant most everyone is competing with conventional wisdom tactics...S/R...trend following...etc.
No? The daily S&P 500 trends more than the S&P 500 intraday. So, are you rich from your intraday "trend-following"?
+1 Up -1 Down + 1 Up = 0 Not easy to trade intraday it seems, but those who can do short-term reversals could be able to make good money if they are as able as they claim to be. What's with the clock?