No reason to post profitability. Why should you? If one is successful as a trader, you do not need validity from anonymous people to tell you that you are in fact the real deal! Your results will show you. I open my mind and try to learn from the posts of intelligent posters on elitetrader. Seriously, you can figure out by what a person says if they know how to trade or just spewing nonsense! I choose to listen and learn from others. There are probably, 1,000 ways to make monies in the stockmarket. Each person has their reasons for trading and their own trading method. If it works for you and you are profitable. What else matters?
Let's make sure we are clear, must VWAP start at 0:00? I cannot get for my software VWAP to start at the opening bell, but it only starts at midnight.
Any one who has hung around trading for a few years but never shown a profit can talk the talk very well. Its almost impossible to tell just from internet posts on a forum if someone who claims to be profitable is or is not, if they have studied trading and know what is realistic and don't make outlandish claims they will come over just as knowledgable as a profitable trader even though they never made a profit at it. Because for sure they would had a few profitable trades in their time, just not enough to pay for the losers.
Each trader probably, will have different levels of competence as far as trading goes. However, I am not going to go to why some things posted are probably, just BS as compared to others which is full of relevant information. I have learned a lot from other posters on Elitetrader. If it helps my trading and makes me a better trader, would it matter how much that trader actually, makes in the stockmarket? I have no doubt, there are more capable traders on Elitetrader than people actually, think. Much like the claim that 80% of options expire worthless. I seriously, doubt that claim. If you trade options, you will sell any residual values on trades that do not work out! So, how can it expire worthless when you have already closed it out and sold it?
Why don’t you investigate a strategy that exits (takes profit) where most retail traders put their stops and your mental stop is based on long term volatility bands and account drawdown.
And you sir are one of those who post to assist others. Thank you. Unfortunately, I have to read through many pages of debates and arguments about... to find your posts.
That seems to be just factual - can't see anyone reasonably arguing with it, at all. That's where I disagree. For several reasons. Firstly, it's statistically highly unlikely. Secondly, I know some steadily successful traders who are members here. Thirdly, nobody (who isn't promoting some service or product, or themselves) has any reason or obligation to post proof of profitability at all, or even any incentive to. Fourthly, there are both "independent"/"retail" and "institutional" traders posting here: it seems reasonable to me to posit that the "institutionals", overall, may be the more profitable of the two groups, and many (I suspect actually most) of us are prohibited by our NDA's from posting anything like that, here or anywhere else. (Personally, I'm not even allowed to post charts, because "mine" are actually the property of my employers, and that's expressly specified in my employment contract.) So for many reasons, I don't agree with your conclusion at all and I think your logic is deeply flawed, there. (Don't take it personally: I do like some of your other posts! ).
Late to the party, but to summarize: As OP does note, the reason for losing are often unrelated to incorrect direction or delta expectation. In fact, you might be entering the correct direction 50% of the time randomly (assuming e.g. no long bias) with fixed same size PT/SL, but you will be losing badly due to slippage/fees. Add to that it's possible to blow up your account with near 100% certainty by using improper risk management, since big losses multiply down your account value more effectively than corresponding big wins multiply it up in case of scaled bets, and in case of fixed bets simply having a losing streak bigger than your account/psychology can withstand. So what about trying to do what others are not doing? How do you know what others are doing? In fact, there's always someone taking the opposite end of your trade by definition, so there's someone automatically not doing what you are doing..