I suppose. And for his sake, I do hope he had bet small on that one in relation to his account size. However, he regularly criticizes me whenever I mention stringent risk control, and always counters with "you have to bet big to win big," and has more than once directed me to mutual funds or some such if I "couldn't take the heat." His commentary strikes me as all-or-nothing, with little or no evident appreciation for gradience. While most market survivors would characterize themselves as being risk averse, surf has gone out of his way to distance himself from that crowd.
Look, every trader, if s/he will admit it, is wrong more than s/he is right. The key is money management and signals that make sense. One of my mentors, who has had epic battles with Surf, is right about 40% of the time, but he is successful. I don't like the idea of piling on. Surf made some errors. We pointed them out. His bravado is part of his persona. If you don't get this this, Hulk Hogan and Terry Hogan are two entirely different people. I type this because he is a fellow trader. We disagree on everything, except the sentiment that dump truck(all in) trades are necessary to really grow your account. If we are truly a community, and there was a time when a lot of professionals visited ET, then let us say what we think Surf did wrong and leave it there.
I get that T-dog, and I do not deny that he has cast some slings and arrows, at all of us. He has even rejected one of his original mentors, PTJ, by demonstrating that he averaged down. PTJ would have called him stupid, in public. He picks and chooses which Gann rules he will follow, and when I say this I do not talk about astro, which most Gann followers take with a large grain of salt. I see a trader in pugatory, and it saddens me. Whether he deserves it or not is not relevant to me.
That is absolutely not true. It is simply a return profile some traders/strategies have, and not others. A 40% win rate means the trader is bound to take fairly regular strings of losing trades. This is really no better or worse than taking one larger loss, all else equal. What actually matters is the forward expectation of the trade and managing risk (the best way being not over-leveraged). A momentum trader might exit with a stop loss because he knows after x amount against him, the trade is no longer valid. He then makes back the amount on the next trade. A swing trader gets down the same amount, assesses the forward expectation as still positive, and sticks with the trade. He makes back his loss. Follow the money. So long as each trader made a correct assessment, the situations are actually the same. To think otherwise is simply mental accounting. What matters is having a positive expected value that one can capitalize on over the time horizon that is relevant.
I was a noob back then. If I had the knowledge then that I do now, I would have easily avoided the bubble. In my selfish capitalistic view, there are days when I wish for a bubble now, I will make a killing. I remember when MSTR opened a hell of lot lower, I was deep underwater. The bubble was beginning to burst. Bubble? What the heck is a bubble? That is where I was. My issue with Surf is that he has seen a raging bull and raging bear. I am very curious as to why he does not apply this knowledge.
Sure. In the example once we went above 1326 ES, that was the sign to go long. But even if one missed it, the market came back to the former resistance twice, AH and RTH so there were plenty of times to go long (or get out of the short).