WHY are these "never lose guru" types usually from the mid or south west USA? Education level? what could the reason be??
If I recall there was a poster here named marketsurfer who made a Gann channel out of two straight horizontal lines. It worked nicely in high volatility environments.
I would trade 100% strategic and 0% tactical. By this, I mean I would diversify simple trading styles like trend, countertrend and rangebound over time and markets. I wasted too much time and effort on when to buy and when to sell. My time would've been better served asking; "should I be long, short, or flat?", for the simple strategies in multiple timeframes and markets. Rather than compounding I would add more timeframes or markets to build the account while continually lowering the overall risk. Acrary There are many lessons in the above paragraph. I wanted to reflect on three of them. 1. Instead of diversifying via simultaneous long/short strategies, diversify via 'market character', i.e. Range Bound, Trend. These two can be further classified to get more precision. The big advantage of doing so is that while long/short reduces volatility by reducing overall profits, diversifying by market character can actually increase profitability (no hedging cost), while keeping volatility down as well. 2. Instead of spending valuable research time hunting for new 'edges' within limited markets, one could spend the time characterizing a vast number of markets and then applying simple strategies once compelling opportunities present themselves. 3. Diversifying across 'time periods' further reduces net volatility, while developing the trader's skill set to enter at the right time instead of waiting for some arbitrary 'bar interval' to signal confirmation.