no kidding, I have the perfect way to fail you start out flat, of sound mind and body, you paper trade and determine you have a viable strat and you determine that it should periodically have a 30% or more drawdown you put it on live and the first time you hit your predetermined drawdown suddenly, you don't like it anymore, and you get flat and try again with another strat only this time with 30% less trading capital
Yup, and people keep doing this, over, and over, and over, and over, until they sit down and finally analyze them-self for once, or quit. They will say stuff such as, "X SMA and 40 Bollinger band strategy with ATR with support and resistance levels has been making me consistent money." Then, they leverage it, or lack discipline to follow the strategy for more than a few weeks, and then blow up their account. Then they post on ET, "why me?" Someone actually tries to help them. The person trying to actually help gets called a jerk. Then other novices give bad advice to the failing trader, only continuing the cycle.
Why accept such a drawdown? The market doesn't determine the drawdown, the trader does. If the trade goes against you, just get out of it.
You see, I really don't give a crap what your strategy or theory of the month is. Obviously your upset, and I'm sorry if I offended you. The point I was making was about money management, and discipline, that's it. I have no secret plan or strategy to dominate the financial markets lol, no one does, so i really don't know what you want from me. I could make up some BS and say, "I use technical indicators such as the 10 day ema with a 50 sma, and profit off of the blah blah blah blah. Then I watch the volume leaders on Yahoo! Finance and use the secret ratio I made at Princeton." Think about it logically. If there really was like this secret all knowing way of predicting anything, wouldn't the government have it? And then use it to make money to pay back the national debt, and then make more, so we never have to pay taxes ever again? I immediately get suspicious of anyone who says they have a fail-proof system. What I am stating in my earlier posts about money management and discipline, is kind of common sense.
ok, thanks for the advice I'll remember that next time the market moves against me I don't know who you think you are fooling, but you aint fooling us
If you have a solid trade method that follows price action with directional bias, no market can never "move against you" for very long. At worst you will hit brief periods of chop for mild drawdowns... that is it. Then when directional price action resumes as usual, you cover those mild draws and on to the next equity peak high. If the market is consistently "moving against you" then the key word in your failed approaches is "against". When you learn to trade with the market, there is no against.
{rising market, message board "traders"} "short xyz at 1530 > stoploss 1538 {1538 level is passed} "short 1539.50 > stoploss 1560" "short more 1544. short more 1546.50 > stoploss raised to 1580" {next day 1580 is hit} "silence from the poster... pretends that never happened, lets time pass so hopefully the fan-club readers will pretend, too. Repeat the process for months or years until alias disappears"
No, I'm not upset. This doesn't matter enough to me to upset me. It's no different from what I've heard thousands of times before. Nor am I offended. Your success or failure has nothing to do with me. As to trading plans, they needn't be secret. Mine isn't. ND's isn't. As to discipline and money management, yes. But the most rigorous discipline and the best money management aren't going to turn a losing strategy into a winning one. One must first understand what he's looking at. Then he must understand what to look for. Without that, he will fail. To say that one must not focus on trading plans but rather just "do it" is not what I would call a winning mindset. As to an all-knowing way of predicting something, that's not what the law of supply and demand is all about. And as to my strategy, if you don't give a crap about it, that's fine. But you may want to learn something about it before making judgmental statements about it.