Right, you're one of those, very nice. No point then in explaining your quote "you are ALWAYS winning (even when you are losing)" is the same as deluding yourself. Try telling Usain Bolt (gifted perfection) or Kobe Bryant (worked perfection) that they're failures. Only the irrational people on the right side can say someone must fail to win, simply because they don't have the capacity nor the gift to find perfection which is where the profits are, funnelled from those same people who say perfection is wrong. Having done both win to win and fail to win, can tell everyone with absolutely certainty, actively choosing fail to win is the most stupid thing a rational person can do, because those delusional people on the right side that you have to go through are nasty bits of work with no empathy and no humanity.
Not Koby but will you settle for M J? “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” ― Michael Jordan
Although ET pretends to be for elitetraders there are still a lot of idiots that even cannot read correctly what was posted. OP NEVER wrote that you should actively choose failing to win. Reread what he posted until you understand what he was posting. If after 10 times you still don't understand it, just stop wasting your time, as it means the postings go above your level of intellectual understanding.
So many issues here. First of all, the OP is saying that if he takes every trade according to his plan, its a winning trade, no matter the outcome. What is so hard about this? I followed up with the question of how many trades put money in his account, and he said about 1/3. So think about it, his win rate is only 33% and yet he is still net profitable. This means 2/3rds of his trades don't work out, but he is still profitable. This is what new traders need to hear. When it comes to sports, something much different is going on. When the player takes a shot from the centre line, practically the entire outcome is in his hands. Maybe some player can block the shot, but for the most part, if it goes up high enough, and straight down into the basket, he is pretty much in control. There aren't even winds to worry about, unlike in golf. Contrast this with trading. The minute you enter the market, lets say long, what you need is everyone else to start buying. You have absolutely no control over this. If nobody else want to buy anymore, right after you did, then price is going down. All that you have control over is seeing the change in sentiment, and getting out. So perfection in trading is making sure every trade wins, which you cannot do, unlike in many sports, where perfection might mean getting the ball in the basket almost every single time. I'm still waiting any any of these yahoos on ET who say they are profitable over 80% of the time to actually show their stats. They either don't exist, or their R:R are so skewed that when they do take a loss, it leads to a huge drawdown. Furthermore, traders who make this claim often scale into a losing position, or are swing traders or long term traders, so even if the trade isn't initially working for them, they stick with it. All of these things really change the definition of a very high win rate quite dramatically. For the OP, who is a day trader and needs to close all position before the end of the day, these things don't apply. The fact of the matter is, in this game, losses are necessary because, once again, you have no control over the market. You can only control when to get in, and when to get out.
Reality is that the amount of information traders give is inversely proportional to their real trading performance. In simple language: the more information they post, the less they perform. That's why you don't see any proof. Those who can proof are not interested in proving. You say you never saw any proof. How can you then make this statement? Based on what? Without their proof you cannot make any realistic statements, you can only write about your own phantasy. Same remark for this statement. First find somebody who will show his +80% winning rate and check then if what you tell is true... or not true.
In response to all this, I will say that I have seen a very small number of profitable traders, and what they show is continued taking of trades, with lots of losses along the way. In the end, the average win is bigger than the average loss, and this is what makes them profitable. So my sample size is very small, but in this sample size are no traders who show these amaizng 80%+ wins. It could very well be that those with such win rates for day trading will never show, and this is fine, but one has to therefore go with the assumption that they don't exist. The reason its relevant is this. A new trader comes along and he thinks that if he isn't getting at least a 75%+ win rate, then there is something wrong. You have these clowns on here claiming very high win rates, and none of them can support their premise. Now what is this new trader to think? Well.. the best thing is stay the fuck away from ET, but beyond that, he would think that there is something wrong with what he is doing. Lets use an example. Neke's journal here is excellent, because he provides some real world examples of trading. (I hope @neke doesn't mind me using his numbers) Lets take his last 3 months and look at the wins/losses. All I did was add up the trades, used the ones which had a minuses as a loss vs. a win and here is what we get. (I didn't factor in size of win or loss) 23/47 = 49% win rate.... and a down month 23/44 = 52% win rate.... and a down month 36/56 = 64% win rate.... and a very nicely up month and just for fun... one more... and here I'm cherry picking because I went back a few months to find a really good one where he was up 94k 45/73 = 62% win rate So as you can see... he is nowhere close to an 80%+ win rate, and this win rate doesn't even seem to drastically affect his PnL. Horrible months and good months are all within a 15% win rate of each other. Any time someone claims an 80% win rate, I think this has to be heavily defended, and defended over a large enough sample size through various market conditions and equal numbers of longs/shorts to get a true sense of trading ability. But as we see over and over again, those people don't want to share. Maybe they exist, but if they do, I doubt they are posting on ET.
This is what got me for a long (looong!) time. Win Rate. Expectations about expectancy. I had to learn to give up control in the short-term to gain control in the long-term. For me, high WRs meant I wasn't "minding the gap" as I like to say...I wasn't allowing the winners to wind their way to their eventual, large RR, targets. This is because some WILL come back on you when you are up multiple 2-3 times your risk and stop you out...something that a lot of traders deem unacceptable. But when I learnt to sit back, look at a series of trades' outcome rather than each trade and tolerate the uncomfortable scenarios along the way (such as the one above), I learnt that not only is it acceptable to have a lower WR, in many ways, it's superior. I no longer have to fret about losing streaks (I had 17 full stop outs in a row earlier this year) or trying to nail everything perfectly. Gone are the days where a small loss in focus for an hour/session/a couple days resulted in a huge draw on what took weeks to gain. I just trade and know that if I have the fortitude to hold to target (I don't trail as that gives me an excuse to mess things up), everything will be alright in the end. Thanks for bringing up this very important point.
I've been thinking about what you wrote here and I think the key part is the bit you put in italics- I think people (I know I did) get confused by the fact that you have to love losing within your plan. Following the plan "to the outcome of that opportunity" means staying in a trade that you may well know is about to lose and wanting to do so to maintain the integrity of your long-term edge. I think this is what people like Mark Douglas (RIP) meant when talking of the "probabilistic mindset". Great comment.
Dumb luck I stopped by ET and saw this. Yup. There was reason I italicized. But, there is no "love" of losing, anytime, plan or not. Also, following the plan to the outcome of THAT opportunity does not mean staying for the sake of staying to "fulfill" the plan. If it is known a trade "will be" or "is about to" lose, cut the loss and move on, screw the plan!! Friday is a good example, if long US indexes around 1pm EST. Everything needed is/was on a chart. Anyway, thanks for the comments. Trading is no different than any other business. Not everyone will buy something. Not everyone will like the food, not everyone will be happy with the service. In trading, "everyone" is the trade itself. No love or hate. NEXT!
You should aim at high winning rates with big average profit per trade combined with low losing rates with low average loss per profit. All this within a plan with fixed rules that you will always apply. Difficult to achieve. Always applying fixed rules means take losses within the plan. If you try to avoid these losses you will miss profits too. At least if your plan was good from the start. The losses should be seen as a necesarry investment to make profits later.