I agree with Surf re the stockmarket, in my opinion stocks have lots of unpredictable trends and lots of randomness. Not all stocks, but the majority. In my opinion, speaking for Australia - ASX, only about 15% of the market is worth trading. The rest is speculative shit stocks with dodgy company directors. However Australia is a resource (mining) country which will explain some of that, with companies run by cowboys. But even still, that 15% still is nigh on impossible to trade with regular success. However regarding index futures, in my opinion these are way easier than stocks to trade, and very easy to anticipate points where trend change. However there are some techniques which MUST be known, and if you get that wrong, the market will seem incomprehensible and random. This is my explanation of why so many struggle with trading, they don't have the tools, they don't have the depth of knowledge or secret ingredient which puts the jigsaw puzzle together. If you are an extrovert feely person, you'll probably never get there, you need to be an introvert, back room data person who knows how to concentrate on minute (mynute) details for long periods of time, then you have hope of reaching the "aaahhhh" moment. Failing that, an experienced mentor.
Actually, quite false. I am rooting for you to do well. My only real contention is when you tell me that what I do can't work. Just got home from Wolfgangs (33 and Park location). Split the steak for 4 with friends. Perfection!
Thanks. What's interesting about objectivity of TA is that people who watched me trade for some time and chatted about it it report improvement in their own trading. It's not exactly copying others trades of course, so TA is still closer to skill/art than exact science, but clearly many 100% objective elements involved and this knowledge can be transferred to others. I am pretty sure about it despite have never mentored anyone deliberately, just rambled about stuff with guys mentioned.
Agree. SIF's are probably the best markets to trade (particularly day trade). And you described the traits required for success pretty well. Those are: ability to focus on details, patience to stay aware and focused for a long time, discipline and courage to execute correctly in real-time. P. S. I've never day traded stocks so can't comment on those, but futures are lovely and tradable even when VIX is low, not even speaking of days like yesterday.
Surf, technical analysis works just as well intraday in FX. It might take you quite a while to really get it. I can't say I got this quickly. The only thing I ever got quickly was options cause a lot of math was involved. I seem to need that as a framework. Long discussions with cornix and a few other people really helped me a lot. I took partial ideas here and there and changed them around. In the end, I found my own way. But I still try to improve my stuff with new ideas. Cornix and I found through discussions ways to actually measure different systems and do an aples to aples comparison. So I can easily see if my 'new ideas' are actually an 'improvement'. I truly believe that good trading has to be adaptable with ones personality. Also having good stats through backtesting sure will help you get through the inevitable drawdowns. Patience, not chasing stuff and only entering on well defined signals is vital for survival.
Hats off to marketsurfer for making live market calls in this journal. Takes quite some balls to do this. Marketsurfer has hit a bit of a losing streak with his calls recently, anyone who has been trading for long enough knows this happens to the best of traders. Its worth giving new readers a weekend update on the calls made by him on this thread as there are so many posts now, they may be hard to find. So far i am aware of 3 live alerts/calls on this thread, please correct me if there have been more. 04-03-13 Long CL 10 contracts @ 95.36 stops @94.95 -- Stopped out for loss of -$4,100 04-03-13 Long CL 10 contracts @ 94.97 stops @89.90 -- Stopped out for loss of -$50,700 04-15-13 Short YG (Gold) Undisclosed Size @ 1372 -- Status Unknown, assumed to be still open and currently out of the money by around 300 ticks. Marketsurfer has made references in passing to other positions he has open but as he did not provide live entry price alerts for these positions we just have to ignore them. Mr. Marketsurfer, please provide an update on the 04-15-13 Gold short 1372 trade. Is this call still active? if so please also provide the size taken so we can keep track of your calls consistently. And finally good luck with your future trades and alerts.