What are some examples of "conventional" profitable trading strategies? I'm honestly not aware of any such thing.
Trend-following on long-term charts. Perhaps the oldest and dullest trading technique. In more detail, target the 28 forex major charts from the 8 major currencies. Use D1 charts only. Define pairs which are in consistent uptrends or downtrends using the slopes of the 20 and 50EMA's. Focus in on the pairs in which base currencies' 7 charts are all or mostly bullish or bearish and the counter currencies' 7 charts are all or mostly opposing. In an uptrend wait for a day with a lower daily high and lower daily close. Set a buy order just above the high and a stop-loss just below the low, no TP. Adjust position size to 1% of account capital. If the buy order is triggered exit manually at the third consecutive (or nearly) higher close. If the next day has a lower high, lower the buy order ands stop-loss to the new lower high and lower low: re-adjust the position size. If the order is not triggered quickly or the trend is failing to advance, cancel the order. Avoid over-exposure to the same currencies and their correlated siblings. Once comfortable with the simple mechanics, consider how/whether to pyramid open positions and how/whether to ratchet stops to the latest higher low after entry.
Appreciate the reply, but most of this detail is somewhat besides the point. How do you know about such strategy? And more importantly how do you know it's profitable? (I'd wager it isn't, actually). Do you think a lot of people could answer that question in 2 weeks starting from zero trading knowledge?
%% Old but tried + true. I never found it dull/but frankly its not very exciting, so many will not want to do that. Another Big probleM with it, as they say in chicago ''the smarter you are the longer it takes'' LOL MY remarks at this time are limited to ETFs + cash ETfs/stock markets[ Silver + other metals are in a fair uptrend/but i would not even try to trade the metals cash etfs now\but that's personal] Could learn to trade in one day/10,000 hours is more likely, the smarter you are the longer it takes..............................................................
I know its profitable because it always has been. I didn't invent this, its not a secret or obscure strategy that has to be tested, the basic principles are unchanged since the earliest days of price charts. OK, I favour the 50EMA, many others would use the 200 or the 20 or a combination of the 9, the 15 and the 38, or the SMA not the EMA. It doesn't really matter. Anyhow, I'm trading this strategy, and it is profitable. Important also for a new trader is that the strategy can be learned from zero knowledge in 2 days and adequately practiced in a demo account over about 5 days. After that its the strategy that does the work, not the trader.
Let's say I'm a new trader and I find your strategy description online, along with a thousand others that are all unprofitable nonsense. How am I supposed to figure out that yours is the good one and start trading it in 2 weeks? This is exactly the situation that most newbs find themselves in. Also, I'd be curious to see some proof that you're profitable. AFAIK naive trend following like the one you described has been pretty dead for the last decade.
Now you're asking me to justify a profitable strategy and how readily it can be learned from how easy it is to find. That's a different question. What I said was that a strategy like this could be learned and put into use by a new trader within 2 weeks. What do you see about the strategy that makes it unprofitable? I'd sincerely like to know because I have capital committed to it. What do you see that cannot possibly be picked up within 2 weeks?
Yeah I think we were talking past eachother a bit then. What you're saying is basically that you could teach someone to trade in 2 weeks, assuming you already had a profitable strategy that was simple enough for them to learn. Okay, fair enough I guess. My thinking is this isn't really relevant to 99% of aspiring traders though. Profitable traders don't teach their strategies because they don't want the competition. That's also why almost all trading strategies you can find online are total garbage, and chances of finding a mentor are slim to none. Hence most profitable traders being self taught, which takes years learning. wrt your strategy, it sounds to me exactly like a classic CTA style thing, and while those did well for many decades, have been dead for a while (see graph below) But of course you know your strategy better than I do. I assume you have a backtest covering this time period, I think that would be the minimum due diligence before committing capital.
Cheers. Yes, I do mean that this strategy could be learned and implemented within 2 weeks. I agree, most commercially bought and taught strategies will not be profitable. I think we're both saying they're deliberately not meant to be, that's certainly my conclusion with regards all trading courses, books, mentoring, signal services etc. I have no clue how CTA's trade. The chart pegs them against hedge funds and stock benchmarks. This isn't relevant to the strategy's performance - I just look at % profit per month and per year.