Fellow traders, Never give up. If you study long enough, stay small, don't lose all of your capital, and seek wisdom from those who have been successful, one day you will have the "aha" moment. It's that moment when you no longer see the forest, but you actually see the trees and the butterflies, and the squirrels. Unfortunately, most people will never be around long enough to have their own "aha" moment. They will either blow out their account or get frustrated and quit. But for a precious few, pressing onward will be a priceless transformation of thought and process. Trading is hard. To complicate this, you search around for information and you'll find plenty of advice from the 99% who don't know what they're doing. Then they'll try to sell you a strategy or a signal and you so want to learn this stuff, that you open your wallet to the latest, greatest strategy or guru. You'll eventually chase the rabbit down the technical analysis hole. Once you check in, you never check out! Beware! That's a dangerous and never ending hole. You'll chase new and shiny things and new and shiny people. You'll spend hours on youtube searching for the holy grail. It doesn't exist. But if you keep working and studying long enough, you will wake up one day and it will all make sense. You will realize that you don't know anything. You don't know what the market will do today or tomorrow. Be at peace with this realization. It's okay. It is very liberating to finally arrive at this conclusion. Back testing, paper trading, studying, watching videos, listening to podcasts . . . all of these can be helpful and engaging. But then the day comes when it all seems to click. This is not to say that you don't have losing trades. We all have losers. But you learn to embrace your losers and realize that they are just part of this wonderful game. You start putting the probabilities in your favor. You realize that let your winners run and cut your losers early is the same old garbage recycled by every so-called "expert." In the end, it's all math, statistics, and managing your emotions. That's it. Math and statistics can give you the edge. Controlling your emotions will allow you to stay strong and committed when it seems the math and statistics are failing. Look at the picture long enough and you'll get the answer you've been waiting on. Happy Trading! Sweet Bobby
Sweet Bobby, I disagree with this, politely. I do at times know what is going to happen tomorrow and the next hour and next 60 hours. There is an art to it and it takes time and energy to learn. I don't know where you stand, but traders giving up on trying to understand directional moves and market prediction and settling with naked premium selling is dangerous. These traders struggling and giving up on predicting directional moves and rotating to the "holy grail" of premium selling is a dangerous recipe. In actual experience, I have seen a very hard working new trader give up and rotate to premium selling. He got hit hard and it was an excellent lesson.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to know direction. I trade what is in front of me at the time, while placing probabilities in my favor. You make reference to selling options premium . . . of course we all know this strategy is not for everyone. I have evolved.
For anyone that believes there is only one way to make consistent profits in the market, they are wrong. There are many, YOU the trader have to develop a method that works best for yourself, and hone it, trust it, and ultimately become so good at deploying this methodology that trading becomes boring. Ultimately for the stay at home self employed trader - your trading should have minimal impact on you emotionally as your equity constantly grows month after month. The block for all traders is FEAR, after they have developed a methodology. The fear of putting on a trade because you might lose money, the fear that the market is going to move against you immediately because it knows you are about to put on a trade. So let me drill this into your head: the market is not a sentient being, it has no idea you Mr. Retail Trader exist, further the market knows nothing about your entries on the random time or tick chart or bars you are using, all the market does is move, its up to you the trader to find a trend and enter in the same direction and not get stopped out. And why are you treating every trade like its a life and death situation? Why are you moving your stops because you have to win on THIS trade? Every trade is a random event, again it should not impact you emotionally. If you move your stop even one time, you are doing this business completely wrong. A small loss is cost of doing business, there will be many fat juicy trends in the future for you to make money - understand this, drill this into your thick head. You won't GET IT one day, but after a prolonged time of trading correctly by never ever BREAKING YOUR RULES and becoming okay with taking a small loss and letting your winners run - which is very hard to do - then you can make consistent money in the markets.
The 3d image you posted, (which people with only one eye can never see, which you forgot to mention. Bit insensitive there) is similar to the late 70s movie poster from "Coma". How does an image like that give anyone an answer to anything?
I knew you would stalk me here too you Cramer living troll! I didn’t know you had only one eye! Interesting!