Back to the drawing board. Doesn't work. Let me qualify the statement. My thought was: what if I could link all of the trades as a series of continuing trades: buy, then instead of exit sell, closing it out, immediately reverse direction to execute a short.... when everything works and in sync, it can be used as a tight loss control mechanism, will create a series of winners. Note that prior, each trade I made was stand alone, like a coin toss, each has independent odds and has no memory. Tried backtesting (using indicators) and it worked great. Paper traded this morning, both with and without indicators. Worked for a few trades but then it went out of sync and the "small losses" piled up to became "not so small" losses. I had to exit and licked my wounds. To be successful, it requires great timing skills but the margin of error is paper thin. I don't have any timing skills, so back to my lower risk approach, treating each trade as unique. Day trading is sooooo hard, like playing the roulette in Vegas.
Yes, that was exactly the insinuation. I will say this though. At no point did he ever offer to sell it to me. I think the idea is for me to arrive at the conclusion that I need this badly, and that I would have to ask him to purchase the chance to use it. Oh, and he also mentions how he has lots of friends at Google or Meta or whatever it was in order to show how he knows all the top engineers. So of course we would believe that he can code this special, magical algo. One last point, he likes to show lots of different things. He likes to show you how he trades a range, he likes to show different versions of his algo, but you never really quite understand exactly what the magic is.
This thread is interesting, display of different trading philosophies. Personally, I think market can't be predict, let alone the next bar, if someone say he can, he should be earning more money than Warren Buffet by now. At least I am not there, I am just grinding it out everyday, wait for my edge to kick in the long run.
I am honest enough to say I am too dumb, gave up trying to predict anything: I became trend follower.
Noah my experience was different to yours.VST is a good bastard and i can tell...he showed me similar things to what you say and a few more insights he gave that are pearlers...what you should have taken away from his kindness and openness is how he looks at price and what level of price he looks at...there is a big hint there, i appreciated it as it resembles my own track. VST has got nothing to prove to anyone and he isnt just gonna hand it to you although i must say he gave me some good setups (eg how he chooses a breakout from a range). We had many laughs together and i liked his stories...he admits he is too old that he may not be here tomorrow...so he dont give a damn what anyone thinks...and rightly so... ask @SimpleMeLike says...no one gonna just hand you their edge... you really think they gonna Noah ? kind people hint at it or therabouts but they wont go...here ya go...so i still talk to VST and he is selling me nothing...he is tapping away coding for many hrs , testing etc...i can tell he is a clever bastard... hes been at it for years and when you are at it for years then one fills in time and for some reaching out is a way of saying hey maybe i can help point you in another direction. My own stuff aligns with his...we both have focussed on 1 tick for many years and coding some great tools in this area. So i can tell when someone is real in what they are trying to convey. So i appreciate what he showed me... best John
You are entitled to your opinion. But there are too many old guys here who can't make money but know everything about trading. How much are you making from his insights?
Like I said ...i have my own analysis path and edge...I make money ...good money...but only because of the tools I have developed ...the tools have taken years of progression. I can tell VST has done the same so he has cred in my book... how long you been at it and what did you focus on ?
Maybe we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. But we are all conditioned to be suspicious of free gifts in this internet age. I have not spoken to him, but in all his posts addressed directly to me, I didn't get a sense he was trying to sell me anything. My only complain is his backtest results were too good to be credible. However, since he never revealed his method I can't judge if it were real. I am interested in the general approach and since you said you traded the same way, would you mind expand on it? Thanks.
Sure... I've focused on 1 tick for 17 years...that's my approach and why I took that approach is that anything else is a rounding/smothing effect ....and bound to be less axiomatic.