i think that the longer you're in a trade the most likely you're fighting randomness. a world within a world, everyday i read threads about forecast, projections, predictions and so on methods that are all more subject to random market behavior the further out they are in time. a challenge - while waiting for setups - just trade what's in front of you right now. place a trade, the market will teach you real fast. it's the best way to learn, swim or drown. do it on demo or better micro if you have some disposable cash. i'm a gun guy and often shoot bullets that cost what a micro tick cost. if you want to refine your trading - get in the game you can't set on the bench and become mvp. today's micro products are fantastic product to experiment with - they bring home reality to great ideas and expose those inherent pitfalls of back testing results.
I think your observation on time and randomness has some merit in the context you present it. However, I think the quoted comment is wrong. Just trade, irrespective of whether it's a setup? What are you, a broker? So much for edge, focus, discipline and patience, eh? So in addition to commission, bid/ask spread and the often random outcome of any given single trade irrespective of expected edge, we'll now also add impetuousness to the mix? How cool is that!
I do hold the contrary belief. That's also the law of large number. We don't know what the next flip is going to be. We might flip head 10 times in a row. But it's gonna be even over infinity. How many traders fail ? 95% How many SPY buyers & holders fail ? Harder to catch daily tops and bottoms, Easier to long what's drifting over time @ a short term discount. What's the likelihood of SPY being up today ? What's the likelihood of SPY being up this decade ? Also the reward / risk isn't the same. Short term trading is for suckers They provide liquidity.
well if you have time on your hands while investing - i think you can learn alot about yourself and trading by just doing it as much as you possibly can. practice does make perfect and most all traders don't practice enough to become proficient.
As the saying goes, Perfect practice makes perfect. Doing the potentially wrong thing over and over again, maybe not so much.
Well, apparently only ~10% of swing traders make any money. https://www.vectorvest.com/blog/swing-trading/swing-trading-success-rate/#:~:text=We've seen estimations that,the course of a year. (Can't comment on the accuracy of the claims.)
Like @Sekiyo I hold the opposite view. Index futures have a lot of non-random properties if you zoom out, but on the faster timeframes it's a lot of random flow.