We are basically in agreement, which is why earlier I said I still play with my crayons. MACD's, MA's, patterns....it's all useful and all useless at one time or another. That goes for intuition too but there are times when you just "know" what the market is going to do. You put it all together and trading is based largely on art and talent. I've seen shitty doctors, shitty attorneys, and plenty of shitty traders. Then in all those fields there is the cream of the crop for one reason or another. And to quickly wrap up...when I first started I looked to the guy standing next to me or down the hall to learn his "secret." I really thought there was some kind of secret to success in this game. I quickly realized that 99% of the crowd was no better than me and I'd be better off doing an independent study and relying on my own system, judgment and feelings for success, or the lack thereof.
That's <b>precisely</b> what I'm talking about. And then you develop an intuitive read off what your senses tell you. There are many meanings for the word intuition. Two important ones are philosophy and knowledge. Hit this link and tell me you disagree with the second one that reads: Intuition (knowledge), understanding without apparent effort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition Douglas refers to this as the fucking zone but he doesn't use the word fuck
How about systematic/hybrid traders? Do you need rules to add structure to your trading? Should the goal be consistency or large random profits ?
Newb here. So take this with a grain of salt... I find it amusing that the OP recommends that traders educate themselves about the game they are playing so they may play it more effectively, and a bunch of haters come in and scream "BS!" I know next to nothing about trading at this point, but I can't imagine it is a wrong strategy to learn more about it. Also, whomever made the poker analogy is a bit off. The very best players know the game inside, outside, and every which side you can imagine. They spend countless hours analyzing hand histories (online), betting patters, odds, tells, etc... Poker is about capitalizing on other's mistakes. It's about continually taking advantage of very small edges in odds. You learn to recognize these edges by gaining experience and knowledge. It's not like "house games" such as roulette where the house has an ingrained advantage that can't be overcome. The Borgata doesn't need to win on every turn of the roulette wheel. They just need people to play. The math takes care of the rest. Finally, a few here need to review the definition of intuition. Hint: It does not mean predicting the future by some form of ESP or whatnot.
I really don't see how any trader worth his salt could strongly disagree with the first post -- the ability to read the market on the fly, to be flexible and comfortable with uncertainty, the importance of context -- these are just basic trading abilities that many would overlook in their quest for "setups". I would only go out of my way to trash that post for the sake of misdirection or misinformation, in keeping with the spirit of typical public anonymous forums. But honestly, probably the best distillation of what it takes to make it in this game that I've read on this site in a long, long time.
Exactly....Given enough time 'intuition' can become a reality, but cannot override probabilities on the bottom line... NiN
This thread is quite the lightning rod â with a lot of disagreement... Probably because there are so many ways to trade Call me crazy but this makes perfect sense to me RN
Most traders who are accomplished focus on two things: 1. Being in the market on the correct side of the market, and 2. Compounding capital. Ziad does neither as his focus. Market granularity dictates that stepping is involved. Profit segments are in an order one after the other. To continue on the correct side of a market, a person stays to the left of the boundary. A profit segment ends when the overlap of the new boundary to the right begins. The rate of compounding is simply dictated by the extent to which profits may be applied. It is worth discovering this as an exercise on an Excel sheet. The substitute for Ziad's contention is called "Trust". Trust is unfamiliar to him so far. The three precursors to trust, in order, are: 'tells, acceptance and value. They form points on a circle; trust appears inside and grows as laps around the circle occur. In the trader/market partnership, the roles of each are explicit. Ziad explains his quandry, but he does not know the basis. As a consequence, he participates minimally in the market. The market can be a unique and very rewarding partner. 'tells originate with the market. It is a spoken language to the trader and no conversation can occur. The trader "accepts" the 'tells. All 'tells have value at the time they are spoken. A trader extracts what is offerred as it is offerred. What appears under this arrangement is complete trust in the partnership. I like the expression "edge". People who are oriented to "getting", focus on what they perceive to be momentary opportunities. Unfortunately, all edges have two sides. If you do not read market 'tells, you cannot get the profit segment which is associated with an entry type edge. It will be interesting to see just when Ziad changes from entry/exit trading to be able to take the market's offer. Taking the market's offer is done with hold/reversal trading.