Oh, I forgot to mention that I scored 140 without even finishing the test (I had mine administered by a psychologist). It was boring the crap out of me and I just got up and left before the examination was over...true story...... PEG LEG JOE
Some traders make great money with systems. Most people are more likely to lose without some kind of system. Of course, there are exceptions. g
I've studied the signals for my mechanical systems by running the scan on past dates and then trying to chart read for the best trades. I have found NO advantage to taking signals based on my chart reading which is completely counter-intuitive. The system doesn't always beat me, but in the long run it comes out way ahead. This also applies to timing exits. g
IQ Tests..... One of the most misunderstood and meaningless tests of all. My first wife administered them. From what she explained to me is that a test result is hardly worth much other than to put you in a category. I forget the definitions, but Idiot, Imbecile, Moron, and Genius are real terms. So next time you call an Idiot a Moron....well you can have it all wrong. As far as the numbers....anyone who takes an IQ test will score in a fairly wide range on any given day. But a genius will still be a genius, etc. So if you score a 120, you may score a 140 or a 110 the next day. Alice...a 170? You should be solving the Shuttle problems. John F. Kennedy had tested 119. So everyone on ET is smarter than the guy who figured out how to avoid an imminent nuclear war. His entire cabinet looked up to him and respected his intelligence. Those of you who can remember JFK and how he improvised during his press conferences and how he buried Nixon in the debates know this was a brilliant guy. So put the numbers where they belong. In the "basically worthless" folder of life. Like my wife did. She administered the tests to kids with learning disabilities. That at least served some purpose. Did the kids have emotional problems? Birth defects? Where they abused? Developmentally delayed? This served a purpose. But a very limited one. She did Rorschach and all the other tests. IQ was just a little piece of a big puzzle. She thought the least valuable of them all. SAT's serve a purpose. But still they are not a perfect indicator of how one will do in college. Same for LSAT and the others. But the fact is that MIT will take a kid that scores 1600 on his boards. Alice may have a 170 IQ, but unless she shows what she can do with it, it's as worthless as a post by Thunderbolt. Peace, rs7
great thread. and if you think Clueless is just a loser, you're wrong. Where Clueless is at today is a very typical state for a trader. it's the "nothing f-^&*ing works!" state. i know it all too well. but truth is stuff does work. both mechanical and discretionary, although there's prolly more successful discretionary traders. the discretionary way is to find one setup and then try to play that setup days, months, etc. until you start "feeling" it. they call it "getting screentime". the reason you need screentime with discretionary trading, is cause the setups are not very clearly defined, and you need to compensate for that with your "feel", which you develop (hopefully) after screentime.
There are people who trade with price bar chart and standard MACD or something really "simple" like that. I don't know how the f they do it, but the fact is they are, day in and day out.
Thats how I have always traded. Nothing else makes sense to me. You can see what is going on with the prices moving around. Statistical indicators don't "mean" anything to me, and I know what they will look like by looking at a graph anyway. However, I do use a few stat tools when I don't have any obvious entries from trendlines or Fib retracements. (basic MA's mainly). That said, it did take me a long time to start making money. I'm sure you could become profitable quicker with systems trading. BTW, I do try new things, but I tend to discard them quickly if they don't work out. I've been trying to incorporate candlesticks lately. Even though they give out more info at a glance, they look weird to me after so long with basic bar charts. They may find the junk pile soon. Jay
I totally agree.. anything more would simply be self-fulfilling prophecies... and IMHO, trading is already hard enough as simply BUY / SELL ... why start putting all those Lunar calendar ... and planeterial alignments into it, and make things even more complicated. Keep it simple. It will make you get back to TRADING and not trying to PROGRAM the next Microsoft Windows.