If so many people are unsuccessful traders...

Wouldn't a viable strategy just be to do the opposite of what you normally would? If you're long, and you lose money, you should've been short, and vice versa. If over time you are consistently losing money, wouldn't it stand to reason that the opposite position would me making money?

Say your a TA trader and you keep losing money by following the TIs as they were designed. Can't you do the opposite? MACD goes up, you go short, profit!

I mean excluding commissions and stuff. I guess the only way this strategy wouldn't work is if every time you placed a trade, the stock got into these little +/- 1 cent channels so whenever you sold, you lost money (unless you're trading such huge lots that +1 cent is actually profitable for you).

 

The opposite of a losing strategy will be a losing strategy too.

 

How is that possible when there are only two possible positions?

 

The problem with a losing strategy is in realtime decision making to enter and exit positions.

 

actually as dumb as that sounds, if human mind could be set to be static like a god damn dog's mind

this could be done,

however, the problem is that human always learns even if little by little

and it wouldn't work

 

If you look at your big losses you will see that you did something you do not do with your small winners. With your huge losers you held on doggedly through corrections and just rode the trend, the one going against you. You might even have added to your position. Doing it the right way round is harder.

 

This is easy money.

Develope a trading system. Do not backtest it.

Write some software that sends inverse orders (your long orders are sent as short and vice versa). Then start trading. Don't ever follow up on your trades or equity, this way you won't learn from your mistakes/success.

Go buy your porsche.

 

There's an in-depth thread about this topic here at ET in the past with info by those that has tried doing the opposite of what they were doing and info by those that faded traders that tended to be losers.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s=

Mark

 

IMHO people fail not because they all follow similar "wrong" methods. Just the opposite - it's because most of wannabe-traders DO NOT follow exact rules given by methods they have chosen.

 

See the 11th post on this page:

http://www.tradingblox.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18929&highlight=#18929