I think "all" is an exaggeration, myself. If you'd said "Money management as in size control and letting winners run is a big and very important and very widely under-rated part of it" I wouldn't bat an eyelid or even change my shoes. I just think you're slightly overstating the very significant and important point you're making, and being a little too dogmatic about it. In the general scale/division of what's important to long-term successful trading, I think "entries" are way down on the list below a whole load of other more important factors about which you and I evidently agree, but there are also certainly good entries and bad entries. It isn't nothing. "Period."
Risk control (aka money management, position sizing, etc) is important. Having an edge on your bets/trades is important. Letting winners run is not always important and sometimes is flat out wrong; examples: scalping and arbitrage. The areas of trading where "let your winners run" is a goal worth striving for is where you have good reason to think momentum offers the advantage of positive expectation via the trend bring likely to continue. Hopefully good research and practice is behind your momentum strategy. Pros manage and weave expectation, variance and volume into a livelihood. "Know your edge, exploit your edge — survive the game"
I think we're sort of in agreement , I'm not suggesting being careful with your money isn't of some importance , it's just not key , if you have a very strong probability in your favor , as long you don't get silly over many trades you'll end up ahead , if you have no probability in your favor you can be as careful as you like , over many trades law of averages makes you behind , I guess you believe in mathematical truth or you don't. Not believing in odds , probability if you like, is completely alien to me and I do not believe traders who don't understand this will be or are successful. To me this is elementary and even the replies that sort of agree seem to have a very woolly idea of these hard truths , It makes me realise how differently most of you think to me( and frankly other, for want of a better word, smarter people( I don't consider myself a rocket scientist , but still , you guys ). I don't mean to be insulting but I'm talking to the wrong people ,it's my own fault , too much time on my hands.
I just think you have to start with truth , not muddly half intuitive think it should be this way type of truths. I honestly feel as if I wandered into my local bookies where everyone has a system , but they're all half crazy ,there is a place for subjective opinion , but that world is fundementals , economic /news based trading etc, technical analysis is about backtesting forward testing trying to take chance and bias out of it , many here will tell that even with testing you can easily be fooled with doing lots of tests and finding one that works , ( do a hundred tests and 1 will look pretty good by sheer chance, chance is the enemy . I think more experienced credible posters /traders here take what I've said as a given . will be laughing at my attempts to explain what is as plain as day, I've just wandered into a place that I don't belong and its getting a little old . One trait I've noticed lately among successful traders is being called Henry. I wish you guys luck .
As I don't read as well as you write, I have to ask. Regarding the importance of entries, by 'long-term successful trading' do you mean the trader's success over a period of years, or successfully holding a position/trade for an extended period? If the former, I can only guess that you are referring to the importance of the initial study, creating a trading plan etc. that comes long before reaching the stage of making actual entries. If the latter, be it a 6 month trade or a 10 second speculative trade, I am of the opinion that nothing can outweigh the importance of the entry. True, many important factors are required for the entire trade to be successful. At the extreme, what could be more important than making a proper entry 1 tick below the start of a 1000% move?(just dreaming!)? Anyway, it would be interesting to hear what is on your list above 'entries'. Or, not having read your discussion with DTB2, maybe I have misunderstood.
Desire, motivation, focus, concentration, discipline (non-complacent), prudent, good judgment, opportunistic.
You're very tactful, and it isn't my first language: sorry for the unintended ambiguity. I meant "success over the months/years" not "long trade-holding durations". I think that to be steadily successful as a trader, you have to pay attention to lots and lots of different things, and you need to get all of them right, really: you need to fail only with any one of them for the wheels to start coming off, and for potential overall profit to turn into actual overall loss. In that sense, listing them "in order of importance" is perhaps artificial and arbitrary, but I think perhaps they have varying degrees of "significance" in the extent to which each affects the aspirant's prospects. (For example, I think beginning traders quite often imagine than an "entry-method" and a "trading system" are more or less the same thing, and this is far from realistic! ). I think the things I'd put above "entries" on the "scale of significance" include understanding enough about statistics and probability to be able to work out confidently (and correctly!) whether or not your trading plan has a genuine positive expectancy, understanding why risk-management is more important than profit-maximization - including sensible calculation of position-sizes, "psychology" in general (on which I can't really begin to comment, given my own almost total lack of insight, as an "Aspie" myself, into others' emotions/perceptions), and the specifics of trade-management (e.g. exits, the initial positioning and maybe adjustments of stop-losses, etc.), without all of which "making good entries" doesn't help so much, anyway? I think the idea (surprisingly often seen in forums!) that "all you need to do is make good entries with the right direction and everything else will eventually take care of itself anyway" is absolutely delusional. My contention is that you need to be able to identify reasonably good entries as well as all the above, though. I know not everyone will agree with this, but I always think that for beginners, on the subject of "entries", understanding the general concept that one ought to be trying to learn to identify potentially good long entries in an uptrend and short ones in a downtrend is enough to be going on with, while they concentrate on mastering all the "more significant" stuff mentioned above. I wince when I see beginners being taught to select their entries according to "signals" from five different indicators they don't really understand, as if the indicators and entries themselves are somehow "the most important thing", when they're just not. I think those are often the people still dreaming of finding a "perfect, multi-indicator-driven system" five years later, and they're often also the people whose "five years' experience" is actually one month's experience repeated 60 times over. Just my skepchick perspective.
Henry that is really vague, I still dont know what your viewpoint is other than you have decided that no one here meets your standards. How do you gauge who is an experienced credible trader? Im interested. Surely its not just someone that agrees with you because that is pretty average I must say. I have respect for every single person that attempts to trade. Especially those that battle through the emotions and anger and all the rest of the hardship that come with this game. With regards to your objective stance on trading, there is an element of truth in what you say but again it is just a small part of a bigger story. As Xela so accurately states: