Hello Millionaire, You nailed it. Only way to make alot of money trading is to take good guess and gambling. Guess the Entry, and guess the exit. Do it for next XXXX trades. Manually Trading is Gambling. Automated Trading is the only way to find and confirm Edge.
Seems like you have tried automated trading and you failed. Too bad for you. It's not because you cannot do something that it is necessary bullshit or impossible to do. It's not because you don't know any algo beating the S&P that all of them cannot do it. Trading is not competing against someone else. It's not competing against the market neither. Trading is not playing poker or any other games. If you have found your way of doing money with trading, good for you. But there are many ways of doing it. Automated trading is one of them, and I like it because it removes all the psychology and emotion associated with trading. 2 aspects that are usually related to failure. My 2 cents.
Gambling is a negative expectation game. You are guaranteed to lose. Take your best shot. Trading is a positive expectation game, provided you know what you are doing and have an edge. That edge is your positive expectation which stacks the odds in your favor. You will still have losses but, your losses would be much, much smaller than your gains. Win percentage does not matter. Huge gains do.
I did not lose money with algo trading at all. But it was farrr too much work and backtesting and optimization with little reward. manual trading less stressful and rewarding. Make my trades for the day and end the day.
Your trading edge is built into your trading system. Either you have a good trading system with an edge or a bad trading system without an edge. How to know? Backtest it. There are no shortcuts. Here is a clue. "Any trading system going against the major trend in the Stockmarket is more likely, a losing trading system." Think about it, you are going against the big boys (hedge funds, mutual funds, brokers, banks) each time you trade against the trend. Go gamble in Las Vegas instead, you will get food and free rooms at least, for all your huge losses. "Trade with the trend, not against it."
Bad day -$1900. Was down $4800 at one point That was too big a hole to dig myself out of. Emotionally i don't feel bad, because -$1900 feels like a win compared to -$4800. Day1: +$2200 Day2: +$1200 Day3: +$2200 Day4: +$1800 Day5: +$1400 Day6: +$2000 Day7: -$1900
A backtest is a simulation of the trades. Use a trading simulator and log your trades in a log sheet. That should tell you if it is profitable or not.
Make that money buddy. Feels good just taking a good guess right buddy. I also have drawdown, I scale up to like 5 contracts sometimes to get back even when I feel I will be right and get that win. I just go for it.