if this were so easy, everybody would be doing it. think this way - what is your edge? in other words, what can YOU do better than everyone else? very few can answer this question, hence the 1% success rate.
Hey Dozu. Welcome! Glad to hear from you. Great to have traders like you around here. My edge - by definition in the first portion would be a simple way to consistently determine the chances of price moving way over another. This could be as simple as s/r , trendline, pattern etc. The one I am working to grow from is within channels that suit my eye. With that said - I am trying to put aside what I learned from years of TA and trying to do this from a very basic view point. I am trying to work backwards to unravel prior thoughts.
Do this: 1. Write down a trading plan with entry and exit. 2. Forward test or back test that plan for 200 trades If the expectancy for those 200 trades is high, continuing trading that plan, because NOW you have an edge in this trading business.
xburbx, Becareful on what you think edge is. Edge is a proven trading method or technique that produce consistent profit over X amount of trades. Do your journal of trades show positive expectancy with decent drawdown? if yes, you have edge. Go trade. https://www.smbtraining.com/blog/7-steps-to-building-trading-edge
Thanks. At one point in my trading journey I did have a positive expectancy over quite a few live trades. The reason this was different than prior times was not only were the tools I was using extremely helpful in my TA but I was following a consistent approach daily. I keep this time in my trading career in the back of my mind. This was something I did via lots of different markets and scanning stocks over and over. I am trying to bring that same mental and technical approach to trading a single market day in and day out. I believe it was my approach and mental method of that stint that was different than prior times. did
There's no way that a computer program can approach the flexibility and adaptability of a skilled discretionary trader. Simple TA tools which can easily form the basis of a trading algo, like S/R pivots, MA touches or crosses etc. offer no material edge by themselves for precisely that reason. Profitable discretionary trading really is like being a world-class sports superstar (albeit not as well-paid, you have no team to make you look good, and losing a game means you lose money). The rules of the game stay fixed but each game unfolds differently, and requires not only an exhaustively researched and rehearsed plan but constant on-the-fly adaptation to the other guy's play. It certainly is a paradox which is why only a tiny fraction of those who attempt it (in pro trading or pro sports) are ultimately successful.
The concept of trading a single market day-in, day-out is fundamentally flawed. 85-90% of days in any given market offer such a low number of poor-quality setups compared to the best 10-15% of days, that they are not remotely worth trading. It logically follows that the correct approach is to monitor a large number of markets and trade only those which you suspect might have nice moves. You seem to already know this from your own experience, as you say above - so it's a bit puzzling why you ditched a consistent positive-expectancy methodology to try and grind out ticks in a single market.