Please note that I do not mean comparing one losing trade to one missed move. Rather, I mean a more generalized observation.
do you mean decent moves that you SHOULD have been in according to your method OR decent moves that you had no reason, according to your rules, to be in in the first place?
A decent move that did not register by the rules of your system. Again, I don't mean the comparison of single moves with single losses. We all know that any method, no matter how valid, will incur losses and not catch every good move. The question is, which of these 2 "weaknesses" in your present method of trading do you find more irksome.
I am not troubled by either... My strategy misses the winners that it was not designed to catch and catches the losers that it was not designed to miss. The question is at odds to a very basic and fundamental principle.
I don't think so. I think most traders are generally looking to hone and improve their trading, either very actively or perhaps somewhat more passively. And the focus is usually on one or both of the two considerations in this survey. My question is which consideration presently weighs more heavily on the respondent. If you have developed the ultimate trading method that could not possibly stand any additional refinement, then you should probably not trouble yourself with this survey. EDIT: In retrospect, and in fairness to your point of view, perhaps I should have worded the question differently. Perhaps the question should have been how would you prefer to improve upon your present method of trading -- by reducing the number or amount of losses or by catching more winners? I imagine that most people would prefer to just catch more winners, come what may. However, I don't think everyone is optimally desensitized to losses, which can be somewhat destabilizing in clusters for some traders. I'm one of those people. Therefore, I focus on keeping losses at a minimum, irrespective of optimal potential performance. On the plus side, you can load up a bit heavier that way, all else being equal.
Who cares if you miss a trade that your approach did not have you being in. Creating a method and cultivating the discipline to follow it to a tee are vital to long term success. If a move happens that your proven, successful method does not have, then so be it. Plenty of moves will come that you will catch. And you can always look back over the trade(s) after wards to see if you could improve your approach further. But once you start worrying about missing moves and start "winging it" (in real time) based on stuff outside your method, it's a very slippery steep slope
No system can ever capture the entirety of the reality in front of you, you will always leave money on the table and should be okay with it.