Since I stopped trying to pick tops and bottoms, and instead started buying higher lows, selling lower highs, and (gasp!) buying at or above the day's high, and selling at or below the day's low, I haven't had a losing day. I've had losing trades, but they are few and they are small as a result of how close you can place stops when you trade with the trend.
this will be hard for you to understand. reflect back on 9/11. I suggested to Liz toi turn on the TV in the kitchen right after I went to cash. Why? The Chicago markets were open at that time for the futures indexes. What was going on that tipped all of us off? Pull up an OTR chart and see what what was signalling to go to cash. When did the news break on TV? se iff you can give yourself a chance to find out how it all works. Use briefing.com to plan your day. Try to do some annotating of volume and price. See if you can see that the markets lead the news. lets say you do get into figuring out this or that. If you do you can see the three moves of the market during news. By working through these tasks yo get to the place where you undrstand that the market leads the news. By having a trading routine other than the OODA type betting, you may be able to get to a place where you can reason out things instead of where you have now wound up. If you look at the OODA feedback system, there you find a simple logic sheet that explains a lot of your false conclusions. good luck; you are in trouble.
most reasons you wrote are non-sense. there are lots of reasons people fail. the most important reason is people think in the failure way, they believe trading is hard to do and they will not go over it, that is why most people keep digging into reasons why people fail, they are seeking failures to prove to themselves they are not able to achieve success in trading. they fail before they start. if a person really takes it seriously, he will do whatever or try whatever to succeed, ..... most people are lousy and lazy (human nature), they do not want to work hard, but they just want the fruits. If you treat trading like treating farming, you are on the way toward success. you need water your plants regularly, root out weeds, ..... That reminds me Thomas Edison
You were right. That was pretty hard to follow. I'm familiar with the tendency of the market to act on news before the news actually happens. It is clear that word reached traders before the general public found out. Perhaps i'm using the word "news" incorrectly. I mean a development or current event, rather than whatever cnbc is saying.
Let's move away from the whole psychology motivation blah blah. Practically, my point was that the market makes it's moves very difficult to determine, due to the sheer amount of stuff that's happening.
That sums up everything, because everything else that you guys said should have been brought up/thought of in the plan.
I agree. Traders fall into traps. The price action that looks the most convincing and enticing can also be the riskiest because the strength is stale. Even when trading with the trend, unsuccessful traders end up buying near the higher highs and selling near the lower lows of moves more often, then they sit through heat to probably soon get burned. Fresh strength (like momentum building after higher low) doesn't look as enticing on a chart as it should, because it lacks confirmation and the sense of assurance of a price near future higher high. But fresh strength is obviously where the opportunities are found, where we can practice good risk management. But like everything, it's easier said than done.
Upside down. Downside up. Inside out, outside in. Alice In Wonderland. Drink this and you get smaller, eat the cake and you get bigger. The problem is you gotta know when to go inside, outside, bigger, smaller... Easy stuff.