Well there is a definite time constraint in many cases i.e. having to do research. There's also the issue of mental focus. I agree there is a certain point at which passing up a trade is simply missing opportunity, question is where that point is. Poker is a bit different because you aren't going to screw up on a big hand because you stole the blinds the hand before. Unless you are multi-tabling online, in which case you'd not try stealing the blinds if you had a huge pot on another hand - you'd focus on the big play not the small one.
Two similar threads on the same day? I've been doing this for years. The advantage of discretionary trading is most prominent, at least in my case, in trading the larger swings. I also use a statistical method for intraday and swing trading. Different approaches for different problems...
There's a case to be made for being very selective, but there's also a case to be made for being less selective, if you have capacity. Sometimes it's optimal to accept a lower Sharpe to generate a better gross return.
I never understood the expression "crazy like a fox before". This story is right on point and bolsters the OP's contention. I trade only futures and don't hold overnight so obviously I take many more trades yet in my time frame I need to worry less (probably not at all) about missing good trades and focus on only the best. Being extremely selective and the striking instantly when it is all right is surely the way to low risk high profit trading. While actually doing it is hard it is the correct goal. I will raise my hand when I get there!!
I think the poker analogy is not correct. In poker because you must ante up there is a cash cost to sitting tight in addition to the opportunity cost. More and more I think of trading as comparable to a NL game which in liquid markets your bets are always faded with no cash cost for sitting. If you could find such a poker game you would surely raise your opening hand standards sky high. Why not? The fade is there. Part of the reason it pays to "shop" for weak tables in a poker room is so you can get faded more often on your aggresive bets. That is what weak players do -- they call big bets with draw hands and mediocre made hands. My guess is that there is a very high correlation between selectivity and low risk/highly profitable trading and if we could look at the statement of every successful trader that correlation would be shockingly high ... maybe even unimaginably high.
Not necessarily... It depends on a variety of factors. A simplest counterexample is a mkt-maker, who can't be selective, 'cause selectivity isn't in the job description. And yet, mkt-making and liquidity provision is one of the most lucrative activities out there.
Clearly Martin, market making can be extremely lucrative but it is not trading in the context of this conversation and is not trading in the context of 99% of the conversations here on ET. I have no quibble with your contention that some of the most lucrative activities revolve around being willing to post and be hit but again, in this thread, the conversation is not conducive to that type of technical argument.
I was only trying to use mkt-making as an illustration of a principle that being not selective at all in a higher frequency context can work too. Isn't that what the HFT muppets do and some of them make out like bandits? It's just a matter of optimizing your strategy to a particular setting and I imagine it can be done quantitatively without too much suffering... At any rate, it's just that this is a discussion I periodically have with some of my colleagues here and the conclusion is, basically, "it depends".