Do you test your strategy with some tools, if you are doing that, won't it require some form of of automation which also implies that you can automate the trading strategies?
dextor, I am still writing down a few strategies to eventually program and back test. I had a few ideas that I was thought was profitable, I went to ninjatrader to program them, click back test for about 5 years in the past, and they was unprofitable. I am moving on. I trade support and resistances that I see with my eyes daily, so that's pretty difficult to program and back test. Plus I am still thinking how I wanna actually trade. I am still in process writing down a few things. I rather just trade everyday for now what I see and monitor the results and try to make some money man. I enjoy this for now. I honestly could not find nothing that works programming and backtesting strategies. But this is just my experience, could be different for others.
Intraday trading benefits: 1) You can sleep sound without worrying either the market is going to crash (if you are long) or rally huge (if you are short) overnight; 2) You can place huge bet (like 100 car of ES) as you watch them closely and can exit instantly when the trade hits your profit target or cut the loss really quick; and you can make multiple rounds of profits as often market is oscillating between bottom and peak within a range; 3) You feel more in control as you pick and follow your time frame (either 10 second chart, 5 minute chart or some magical proprietary charting that merges together price action and time element).
You’ve identified a pattern above - pt1 to pt2 to pt3 of price are the minimum points to identify the Dominant and non-Dominant moves of price geometry. What comes next is either 1) a Volatility Expansion OR 2) a Failure To Traverse. Occurs like clockwork on all timescales to an astute observer, which by your own admission you have no appetite for nor desire to obtain. To deduce the market logically one has to start with the market’s basic granularity - ohlcv. Using those basic building blocks then deducing the finite ways on how an individual bar builds, how there’s a finite set of definable relationships in context with the prior bar and also the bar that comes next. What then begins to reveal itself is that the market operates through a sequence of events decoupled from time. Unfortunately all of the above requires work - work most are unwilling to do.
Interesting that you made the switch. I guess the dream is to be able to somehow automate your discretionary reads but I doubt thats possible. I am reading an interesting book that talks about "gut feel" and the neuroscience research is saying it is basically you processing information pre-consciously. There are some survival systems in place that act faster then you can consciously reason out to give you extremely fast reactions in the face of real life threats. I believe the market is a dangerous place so through repeated exposure your brain will learn which patterns lead to outcomes that can either harm or enrich you. Kinda like hunting in the wild. At some point through your discretionary trading journey you should theoretically be able to benefit from such insights. Sometimes you watch the chart and you just know something is about to happen... Its not part of your plan, you cannot rationalize why you know this but you just do...and most times it happens just as you thought it would. I still dont trust myself to take trades based on these gut feeling but I truly believe this is what separates human discretionary traders from algo's. I also believe that you need skin in the game for your nervous system to be really primed and paying attention to these subtle subconscious cues...this is just my theory though.
I sleep very well with long term trades on, especially the ones I bought in 2009, started selling options on them in 2011 and collect dividends, and when I get rid of them one day, taxes be less. And guess what, you can set stops each night in ES to hedge your stocks if something bizarre happens. Were you trading on May 6, 2010? "Thankfully?", I was recovering from brain surgery in Boston area. But I knew many day trading who ended up bankrupt that day but a few who made a million. But I was watching the action that day, and don't for a second think it never will happen to you, I found it as a time to buy more stocks long term as I was filled on deep limits. If you had a stop, it been delayed as huge amount from around the world pushing to get into Globex and in S&P pit was clipping in 10 points I was told but very little orders filled. Is there anyone at ET was still in S&P pit on May 6, 2010? "Control" is an illusion, you can't control your heart beating and can't control anything on this Earth, and we all one day will die. What we can do is accept knowledge, research to make it ours. I know anything that I use to think would never happen, will do again.
A guy was lamenting on the radio: "a system in which 2 idiots' opinion counts more than 1 genius' opinion is doomed"