To me, my system is a boring , I just repeat and repeat the same processes, squeeze monies out from the novice that trade on TA, chart, indicators, mentor advice, news, MA cross over day to day, year to year. I hate to wake up every day to do the same thing, money is no longer an issue, but I don't have much more excitement anymore on trading, and my back is killing me after sitting in front of monitor for many years.
I landed a trader job at a startup HFT firm here in Chicago 7 years ago trading futures (saw the firm evolve into only hiring IVY league, PHD candidates, etc soon after). After 4 years working the European shift I left and began trading my own account. I had read dozens of books, used my moderate programming skills to backtest MA crossovers, simple patterns, different combinations of indicators, all the crap I was reading in books like John Carter's Mastering the Trade. Moved on to Market Profile and saw how price behaved differently based on past volume. That was the key to all this stuff, it sometimes worked so I just needed to classify market states and apply the appropriate strategy. The last methodology I traded before finally getting it was supply and demand based. Results were literally break even over 3 or so years of trading. I would always make a good chunk of money because my success rate was 75%. It's easy to achieve this when you pull stops and let the market come back and bail you out MOST of the time. So yeah, it was the 1-2 big losers every week. I know now the reason I acted out (big losers) was simply because I knew there was something more to the market than I understood and it would manifest itself every time I was proven wrong. Again and again my 'ah ha' moments would be flushed down the toilet. Several things kept me going all these years - I love challenges that can never be completely mastered (chess, golf, gambling, women), a big chip on my shoulder - How much time I 'wasted' and feeling I was just as smart as the PHD's (they are book smart but common sense and perception are my things) I thanked the ET members above already (Redneck, NYSE stocks, some odd poster 10 years ago) for stripping my charts and brain of everything I had learned up to this point. Now at least my tools were directly linked to current price and what I saw - measured moves and trend lines mostly. After a couple years of kicking around these ideas with less than nothing to show for it, I finally saw 'it'. For me, it took first learning which tools were and weren't b.s. and second a life event that shook my foundation to the core. That's how brainwashed I must have been. For those wanting to be spoon fed (like I did) the best a complete stranger can do for you is help you help yourself. Hell, if someone pointed out what I learned on my own I'd probably not feel deserving and sabotage myself anyways. I'm pretty sick like that. I'll try to keep this site posted on my profitability going forward (aka the success story... seriously). As I stated, I have much other important things to tend to at the moment and have only been swing trading recently. It's up to the reader to decipher what's relevant and what's not. Nowhere on this site or anywhere else are the answers you need in black and white but if you start FOCUSING on the right stuff it's right there in front of you. Always has been. BD
With you taking money from everyone and his dog, I find it surprising you didn't hire an army to sit the monitors for you.
Not necessarily. Some people think they are traders without even realizing they are not. That is often a bigger risk than the risk of the markets.These people can be found everywhere, even on ET, which is really an unexpected surprise for most of us.
I am happy with what I have now, a low risk profitable strategy. All the best to your profitable high leverage, high probability, good risk reward system.
I never said I had a system I just gave you an example that shows your statement about risk and reward is incorrect