We'll have to agree to disagree. Oftentimes I find that the thing holding a lot of traders back from substantial success in the market is one or more limiting beliefs. I think your belief that institutions won't allow a high probability, low risk, high reward trade to exist is a severe handicap. If you don't even believe something is possible you definitely won't be seeing it. From my perspective, the market couldn't be any other way. There has to be an exact turning point for every shift in sentiment with regard to a resolution level. The paradigm I use is primarily focused on recognizing all of the necessary conditions for this to occur. These turning points aren't random. There are often large blocks of trades at these points which come in very close to my own entries.. so I can tell you that there are definitely people taking these types of trades by design. Larger players are constrained by finite liquidity, which seems to be vastly misunderstood time and again by many on these boards. You can't cram billions into a small scale turning point without destroying your expectancy. So large positions are scaled into over time at certain points of relative value, creating a "slope" for price movement over time. Eventually price is driven far enough away from ideal zones of entry by the excess demand, and as that happens interest fades and eventually the scale tips back to the other direction, or you run into territory where counter parties are systematically offloading positions at certain zones, creating the opposite effect. This happens on all levels of resolution; the larger a position being accumulated or distributed, the larger resolution level is required to move into or out of an instrument over time. So it's actually quite easy and relaxing to trade a small block of contracts at levels much finer than huge players have the ability to worry about and get pushed by the dominant sentiment like wind in a sail. What is a dozen ES points when they are positioning in view of an expected 100-200 point drift over the next few weeks? A cost of doing business. Or maybe they actually don't care about where he market is headed, they just need to balance the delta in their book. There's no way to accurately transfer my personal model of market operation through a block of text, and especially not all of the technical analysis that goes along with it. I'm not out to convince you that your idea of the market is wrong, or have a debate. But from the way you talk it appears that you're missing out on some opportunity here. All I can recommend is that you or any people still in the development phase of a trading system give some thought to what I've said. A few gems like these really worked wonders for my own trading, so I try to pass them along from time to time. Maybe you will find some value from these considerations. Best of luck trading.
Getting back to original question, whether intraday or long term, my trades have to get going between 2-5 bars or systems try to get out at little better than Breakeven. Option trading, time decay is grand but not warm and fussy when have outright underlying positions open. But depends on how you have backtested as well.
I agree that Luck matters alot while trading, but hardwork also pays. If you enter the market with proper trading plan and strategies then there are chances that you will make profit. Movement of the market is not luck, there is well defined technical or fundamental reason for the market volatility.
The aim is to reduce luck to the lowest level and hardwork to the highest level of influence on the results. Everything in life has to do with luck.
%% Certain things are beyond our control, sunrise, sunset, both are @same time over many years..... No such thing as luck; John Henry said ''what you call luck ;i call a small sample'' Good point on 'hard work'', M trader
Its relative. Depends on time frame. And risk. And view. Something else to consider: discretionary traders cannot be all the time in front of trading screens or if in front of screens 100% focused all the time. If looking for the breakdown moment, one may often miss the trade. Does shorting NQ last Friday at 5884 with a 30 points stop represent a bad trade? It only broke down on Tuesday, after two further incursions into all time highs.
%% That sounds right + is mostly; until you understand ''what you call luck i call a small sample''-John Henry. Many people would say when the lottery winner got run over a truck the same day he ''won'' it was bad luck- not really.That was double stupid. Thanks for your reply.