LOL... see... you just proved my point. You said initially that coding wasn't necessary, that is actually hinders, and yet here is a direct example where your coding skills gave you the go ahead signal after running a test that gave you faith in what you are doing. I think in trading, so many profitable traders don't even really know why they are profitable. They might go on and on about their indicators or other bullshit, but in the end, its I think years of screen time and developing a feel for how the market is moving. Fib guys love to quote their 50% or 61.8% levels, but they still say they don't put on a trade just because a level is hit. They still need to see something else. I think its that something else which matters more. There are like 4 or 5 fib levels in a retracement from 0 to 100%. Mathematically, price is highly likely to turn at one of them. LOL
The reason bracket orders were a game changer was I struggled to get my desired statistics to play out exactly, and it was bothering me. My model results did not match my real results. Bracket orders basically encode average win/loss. Then your only job is to make sure the brackets are achievable and take ONLY the trades you're supposed to. So my trading will look like -6.75, 20, -6.75, 20 ideally but sometimes (like today) I keep pulling the take profit higher until it becomes obscene.
Recently, just out of pure interest. It did not impact anything I do, although now I do keep it on during the day and see if it tells me something. Plus pinescript is super fucking easy to learn unless you are retarded.
When I track my trades, I use every entry and then see what would happen if I used a 3 point stop and 5 point target, or 5 point stop and 10 point target, etc. It was amazing to see how my trade management resulted in the least number of points. Usually a 5 point stop and 10 point target for ES worked the best. Some trades did hit 20 or 30 points, and it was even better if after 10 points, the stop is moved to break even and then you let the trade ride. But there are of course also times where it hits 11 points, drops back down to zero, and if you didn't take the +10, you get nothing. But over many trades, the stats don't lie about what should be done. What is also interesting is doing a monte carlo simulation. Even with a highly profitable system with a 50% win rate on a risk to reward of 1:2, 5 or 6 losers in a row is completely expected. So many traders pack up after 3 or 4 losing trades, but knowing how this distribution works has to make you prepared for it. But you of course need to be prepared to deal with all of this psychologically.
Trading is always challenging, it's just the types of problems change. Focusing on pair trading leveraged ETFs is working best for me now, vs just daily gappers. Trading is always hard af
I think trading can be really easy when you have an edge and a disciplined process. You’ll still lose but your profit will be much more.
I haven't discovered the holy grail method that will make me money every month If you can make money every month (or anything over 90% of months with no blowup risk in the other 10%), trading will be easy you. Maybe others have found this Holy Grail. In which case you dont need to read any further. I find trading is really easy when it is really easy and it is really hard when its really hard. In that sometimes the market just gifts you lots of money for many months at a time. And other times it just wants to take (again for many months at a time) and there is nothing much you can do about it. You just have to take the losses and not lose discipline otherwise you will miss out when the winning restarts. Over the last decade some years the markets i trade were volatile and much easier to trade and some years they were relatively slow and hard to trade. People will say adapt your trading during the slow markets. But it is not that easy, I find that market action is just more random in those slower years and less random during the good years. Since Covid we have had good markets for trading so our luck is in at the moment.. The above doesn't even touch on about all the psychological issues and biases we face as traders.