I read some of your posts, in a number of your threads. You seem to be energetic, but markets do not know if someone spend work and energy, and do not use work/effort as a basis to pay. You may want to think things through or to seek someone to teach you. For instance the last post may suggest that you may not understand a number of things, for instance there was no stop size and time frame associated with the 50%? Good luck to you.
Your argument is right, your conclusions are wrong. It is precisely because real people with real emotions interact that prices are (mostly) random. People have conflicting interests, they buy or sell at different times and for different reasons. The aggregated conflicting movements give almost perfectly random prices. Think of swarms... It's the same principle. Now you still can spot the few cases where the markets are non random. It is however much easier to trade the randomness. Ninna
Ha, you have no idea how many times I am wrong, really ... maybe 30% trades really works out well (anywhere from 10 tot 25 pips for me), 15% are break even, 18% of twenty are small losers (like 2 pips), 20% are real 'losers' (-6 pips, that should be my most), and then there is a variety left of smallish winners (mostly in the 6-10 category). People have this idea that they'll 'understand the market' somehow or will be able to 'predict price like a fortuneteller' that's not what this is about ... I got a whole set of exact rules for entry (basically four different setups) and then got exact rules for stopmoving according to price action and time to cut my winners short and let my winners run. Experience plays a role in the last part. For most people my day might seem like a total uphill battle but after a while (well a really really long time lol) you know that when you follow your rules you'll come out on top, so it get's better. I can not allow myself to get 'smart', I can not deviate from those, I can not gamble, I just have to follow my rules and get out when the market proves me wrong or I am lost. One of the guys I am in chat with every day over the last few years, made over 20 million two years ago ...
I have a hard time believing you have spent years studying this stuff based on what you post. It's not uncommon for trend following systems to generate their entire yearly profits with a single trade or with a very small number of trades. Why would you base any sort of go/no go decision on a month's worth of Oanda demo trades? It makes no sense at all if you sit down and think about what you are trying to accomplish.
Your argument is right, your conclusions are wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------- well what might seem random to you might not be random to me, I can't vouch for your trading, I trade 1 minute charts, I can assure you these are not random, I know people who do great trading 100 tick charts ... some people are just better reading bigger timeframes (I must admit, I really suck there , these will give you fewer opportunities imo). Trading is a personal thing: my way is not the only way ...
yes, in a way you might say I am a trendfollower myself too (although most people would call it scalping) just on a really really small TF: I try to find the entries where the market reverses, jump aboard and then try to let it run.
Well randomness isn't about perception... You measure it. On any time frame, 10 sec to 1 month, when you normalize prices by trading activity you get perfect randomness i.e. almost 100% Gaussian distribution of prices. It's an eye-opener Ninna
I was looking at it more in the sense of: the market will eventually make a big move (in a random direction) and I'd like to be in it on the correct side when it does. But I see why what you said is also correct. I agree with the guy you are quoting who said that emotions drive markets. For example, after a huge down movement, people like to say stuff like "oh yeah, everyone was selling on emotion and fear, and that's why price fell by [some large percentage]." And then they'll point to the bottom and be like "and then here, some of that fear subsided and people started buying again, driving prices up. Markets are run by emotion. I'm a guru! Buy my course!" And they're correct. But that's also useless knowledge. Unless you have a method to predict what the results of that fear will be, such as how far down it will drive price (and I'm pretty sure the answer has nothing to do with fibonaccis), it doesn't matter if you understand that emotions move the markets. But if you guys have any emotion formulas that result in quantifiable predictions (eg. "people are afraid at a level of 7 fear units, therefore price is going to fall 10%"), I'd be very interested to talk about that.
I never claimed they did. I doubt I would find someone who is actually profitable and not trying to sell me something. I have a PM box full of ET gurus wanting to coach me for money or sell me their system. No thanks. Oh, I know. I'm aware that win rate isn't correlated with profitability, variances in target profit and stop losses and all that stuff. I was just being concise (for once) and saying that predicting direction is not an edge for me. My account stays at about breakeven, which is about no better than random. Look I'm not saying predicting direction cannot be done. I'm saying I cannot do it.