Is Trading a Perfect or Imperfect Information Game?

I think it all comes down to battles and wars. The bigger war is the big boys playing their HFT game. The retailer with their one lots can win but they have to choose their battles carefully

 

Yes. Good perspective.

 

A chart always contains all the information required to trade it – so it is perfect

Does not mean it contains 100% of the information available – but that is totally immaterial – if you’re of the necessary mind set


As for the big bad hft boogie man - pffffttttt

RN

 

I've made many real time calls on ET. I also was in a Skype group for 7 months where I called many, many of my trades as I was in the process of honing my price action tactics.

I've used basic price action setups successfully with CL, 6E, ES, AAPL, AMZN and POT, as well as for swing trading stocks in my IRA accounts, so it's worked well for both futures and stocks.

I never average down, I never trade without a fixed stop loss set in advance. I never move stops except in my favor.

This is technical price action trading, using only support and resistance levels. No indicators are necessary, though I keep a 20-bar EMA on my chart as a mobile support/resistance zone because it's so strongly honored by trend followers.

Here's a day when I called several live trades to demonstrate precision price action trading with tight stops (my stop loss on breakout trades is .10 if not explicitly stated otherwise, my max stop is .20):

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=178741&perpage=10&pagenumber=1457

Here's a trade I called and managed live in real time to demonstrate how I trail a stop to let a winner run:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3109464

Here's a live ES trade I posted recently when I returned home one night to see the market selling off significantly:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64965&perpage=10&pagenumber=9873

All basic price action stuff, no indicators or averaging down necessary.

 

I second that intellectual assessment, RN

What do I care about speed machines programmed to scalp fractions of cents? I'm looking to capture moves large enough to cover my commission, possible slippage, grocery & utility costs, mortgage payment, health insurance, taxes, and my desired vacation in Fiji

 

Let us know how that vacation goes....

 

I just don't see that happening frankly, not in my case anyway. HFT folks don't seem to have much negative effect. I do see robot footprints sometimes, and if that is all i see, I may decide not to participate. They can play by themselves.

One has to adapt ones trading to current market conditions, but that's always been true.

 

No doubt.

 

so the billions the hft players make, this comes out of what, Uranus?

 

It would appear that while you were 'waiting', you never checked the ES or CL threads as Ms NoDoji illustrates with some examples....

MS - Is this the ET version of 'crickets'?



There are many ways to harvest profits from the various instruments. It seems to be a trait of many ET participants to deny the possibility of others successfully exploiting a specific niche.