Listen to him guys, this is invaluable information... Also, kudos to Scataphagos for persistently proclaiming the TRUTH!!! Walt
Does any of that software that generates buy and sell signals based on chart patterns work? It seems to me that the answer to that question should end this debate, no?
I had to read it twice, because the first time I was disappointed. However, the second time what I took away was that a trader can't myopically focus on one mediocre set-up, with the hopes that it will some day transform from mediocre to highly-successful, to the exclusion of actually watching the market and using those observations to develop thoughts about new set-ups. I think this is a valuable piece of advice. On the other hand, I wonder if every successful trader in history hasn't had one "signature" set-up that only they've seen and then ridden it for all it's worth, in which case you'd want to eventually settle on trading one set-up over all others. One of the odd things about trading is that, if you are successful, you'll never know if anyone else in the world is trading the same set-ups you are and, if you are successful, you won't exactly be broadcasting your methods to others just to see if they are using the same things.
http://www.edwardothorp.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/EdwardThorpOnGamblingAndTrading.pdf http://www.edwardothorp.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/beatthemarket.pdf