The secret to the market is that you never have enough knowledge, you need more to make ever higher profits. You have to have the profitable mindset to be borderline paranoid that in your present state of mind you do not know enough about your strategies and the strategies you have not yet discovered. You need to tell yourself that your trading right now is pitiful and that there are people making hundreds of percents every year. One piece of advice, never look at another indicator or method from someone else ever again. If i truly wanted to teach someone i would give them around 10,000 charts divided between timeframes of years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. After i give him the charts i would leave him stranded on an island with only those charts. He would then truly see how the market moves the way it does and then profit off of those movements. Thats how you become a successful trader. If you have not studied at least a thousand charts in each timeframe then you will not be a successful trader.
Give it up dude, you are lost. This whole trading thing is really quite simple. Develop a successful trading plan, build confidence in this plan, and have the discipline to stick with this plan in any market environment. That's it. Any other information is meaningless and distractive.
I'm working on ever simpler stuff going on more than a decade. The stuff I'm looking at today is embarassingly simple. When I get done with this current phase of research I will not be able to look at what I do and feel at all intelligent. In fact I will feel stupid for having spent so much time on more complex stuff......
And then, at some point, the lucky ones wake up and realize that it's time to stop being baffled by the b#llsh#t! Regards Johno
<i>"The secret to the market is that you never have enough knowledge, you need more to make ever higher profits. You have to have the profitable mindset to be borderline paranoid that in your present state of mind you do not know enough about your strategies and the strategies you have not yet discovered. You need to tell yourself that your trading right now is pitiful and that there are people making hundreds of percents every year. One piece of advice, never look at another indicator or method from someone else ever again."</i> Typical of a "free piece of advice from someone else", a worthless post that's 180 degrees away from the truth. Reality is you need to simplify, clarify, pare down and strip away. Simple is not easy and simple is not mechanical black & white. Simple is knowing a few things well, executing their use crisply and lowering the performance-bar of expectations while adding trade size at the same time. Big-money traders use a simple approach (many do use indicators) they've learned well over time. They patiently wait for setups that fit criteria, trust those trades to work (let winners run) and gradually add size to their trades. Perennial pikers clutch the dream of more points with one contract... developing pros focus on averaging few points while increasing contract size. Successful traders also realize that free message boards are much more bar-room than class-room environments. Fine to stop in for a drink now & then, but wading thru bountiful b.s. is part & parcel.
The technical indicator lovers on this board die hard. They get angry, they squirm, they spit, they claim they know someone who knows someone who uses indicators profitably. They claim indicators are self-fulfilling because many use them. Huh??? They cling to Astrology. Elliot Waves. Fib levels. Gann. Their charts look like rainbows... 90% of people use technicals like this, and 90% lose their money. Go figure... You tell them to get off these hamster wheels and learn to read price action. They balk... Idiots everywhere...