Answer on point 1 and 2 are in contraduction with each other. You name people who "shared" with others (so also with you) and then you say that you had to figure it out yourself. So they did not post anything useful apparently. Two of them I never heard about, after googling them I understand that they exist. I don't think there is anybody on ET who got enough info to even make 10% of what the mentioned traders made. So what's the use? Probably they share in books that they sell, and is the incentive to make money from it. If NDA's are just corporate policy, and have no real use, they might as well make a document that they cannot wear blue socks or red shirts. Or just make no NDA. There were already cases in Court because NDA's were not respected. So there is a reason for NDA's. The most popular reaction, but also the most stupid one is: you should be the richest man on earth. That statement apparently proofs that you are fake. Well if that is correct, Minervini, Ryan, Bradford Raschke, and even Jim Simons (Renaissance, Medallion) are fake as they are not the richest person on earth. I am just on ET to kill time while I wait and see how my trades go. After being 20 years on ET I realize it is just good for entertainment. Never learned anything here, except that there are a lot of people with huge ego's and lots of trolls. There are however a few people with whome you can have an interesting conversation. You are one of them. I posted several interesting things in the beginning. You surely never read 90% of all my posts under several different aliases. After getting utterly stupid reactions from some jealous, or just stupid people I asked myself: why do I do this? The answer was very simple: I will not anymore.
high-frequency trading. trading is done by powerful machines with high-speed internet connection. Those traders want tiny tiny tick sizes. So the Exchange makes the tick size smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Look at NQ. The tick size is in terms of nanometers.
The markets are designed around a 92% probability of loss 92% of the time, making a successful trade or investment the intersection of time and price at 8% of 8% or 0.64%, it's the number no one dare mention anywhere, with profits rapid decaying toward the 8% breakeven point. The probability of you making a profit one way and making it the other way is very low given you need to wait 99.36% of the time to find a profitable trade (or at least my definition of profitable), sometimes it happens but you need algos to time the inversion which no one here will have. This week profits are harder to come by as the markets are gearing up, guarding capital at the moment is a fight while still having exposure, there is a lot of 100% inversion happening on insignificant market news causing a lot of people to be whipsawed out of positions at significant loss, interesting times.
This thread has taken a strange meta turn, but whatever. If sharing general tips and wisdom on TA, on setups, on profit taking strategies etc could really spell disaster for your system, then I'll still insist the obvious: that means you're either sharing overly precise details of your system, or your system is overly general to begin with, and therefore prolly not in much danger of being spoiled. Asking something as basic as "hey guys, what do you think about profit-grabbing with strict re-entry criteria?" really should not have produced all this hand-wringing and pearl-clutching. A couple general articulations of philosophy was all I was asking for, not precise exit and re-entry criteria. It says more about this discussion board, IMO, than about the warlike nature of trading that we can't even have a back-and-forth about something as general as re-entry strategies.
When I said I didn't get help frm anyone I meant that no one I know personally mentored me or gave me any advise. What I learned, I learned from books and my own experience. The names I threw out were in response to your question of well known traders who gave there methods away. To my way of thinking, writing a book is giving your method away. Ya there probably is a reason, as any small edge a corperation might have would be valuable. For the most part it's probably just paranoia. Better to be safe than sorry. You called it , it's a stupid one!! I believe that's a compliment, thanks Never understood why posters would have different aliases. Like yourself for me it's entertainment and a chance to interact with like minded traders, plus I might learn something. Those that I feel don't contribute anything worthwhile go to the ignore list.
Got banned a few times. Got terrorized by trolls. So I had to change my aliases against my will. All that confirmed that ET is not at all what they pretend to be. And that made me also decide to not share anything anymore. I did share and received many PM's from people who thanked me.
The reality is that every trader needs to figure out how you to take profit and/or re-enter for yourself. Not because others would not want to help you, but because the way you manage your trades should be based on the combination of how the market works, what kind of methodology you use, and what fits your own trading personality, and not just an add-on. Basically, what is happening to you in this thread, is that you’re getting replies from variety of people. Some are algo traders, some are rule based discretionary traders, some are clueless self-appointed gurus, some are academics, and some people reply with hidden agendas to put others down. You’re already quite aware of some of the nonsense being posted on trading forums. Don’t get me wrong, there can occasionally be some good post on forums, but vulnerable newbies are unable to see through many things. Back to your dilemma: There is no right or wrong way to trade and to take profits and manage trades. However, some methods are more effective than others, but even a less effective trade management method might be more appropriate because of its simplicity, or objectivity, or because it suits one’s psychological make up. Personally, when it comes to intraday trading, I don’t think re-entry strategy (after a move) makes much sense, and I don’t know any professional trader who does that, although I’m sure there are some exceptions. What you need to do, is to jot down on a piece of paper few trade management (and re-entry) methods, and then start back-testing. Backtesting is easy (but time consuming), you just open up your charts, and manually scroll over say hundred of examples, take screenshots and put them into your set-ups library folder, write notes about every example, and enter all the statistics into a spreadsheet. Then you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. It’s worth it because computer testing is never as good as trained eyes. Also, you can list your beliefs about each trade management methods, and if you’ll feel some resistance towards certain method, then it’s a yellow flag signalling that when it comes to live trading you could protentionally develop discipline issues when following such method. It’s always best to use methods which fully resonate with you, because then you’ll have less unforced errors in live trading and less discipline problems. If you’ll dedicate to backtesting (scrolling through charts) say 10 hours each week, then within few weeks you should be very comfortable with trade management and you’ll know exactly what works, when, how and why. The trader’s development and growth come from being independent thinker, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together by yourself, and lots of experimenting and frustration for few years. And then, hopefully it will start to click. Unfortunately, there are no short cuts, and you won’t learn much on trading forums. Forums can actually do damage to inexperienced vulnerable traders. Good luck in the trading jungle
Thanks PPC! Lotta good points in here, especially in your "Basically..." paragraph which also got a couple good chuckles outta me. Only one assumption I'll briefly correct: The last thing I would personally do is take a pointer on a discussion board and just implement it without rigorously backtesting it specific to what I trade. I've spent a year backtesting my current system, but its weak link is still profit-taking. In a word, I feel like what I've built more is more a risk management system than a profitable system. So, foolishly again, I thought why not come on ET in the hopes that conversation would produce an inspirational spark or two for new approaches to the problem. Maybe you're used to posters coming on here hoping someone will hand them their system, but that's just not the case with me. I've not hit that "consistently profitable" threshold yet, but I'm well aware of the commitment level that takes. Anyway, curious why you think almost no professional traders re-enter same day? I mean all scalpers do, right? My idea would basically turn my system from a 2-3 trades per day system to a 4-6 trades per day system, usually lasting in a trade for 30-90 mins.
That makes sense. I only tend to get banned on discussion boards involving my favorite sports teams, but increasingly the market has taken the role sports used to play in my life, so maybe I'm due for an ET ban any day now.