I agree with you on most of above completely, most traders might aswell trade of tea leaf patterns for all the value that's in there methods, but still I'm yet to find an entry that is near enough 100% for me to leave it, don't get me wrong, my entries are GOOD, 74% win rate currently but still not buying it. All the best logic in the world, doesn't protect against a random news events, like the Ukraine events causing 250pip down moves in the DAX in a previous uptrend. And 1's to smaller degrees ofcourse!
It's not random, but there is no way to predict what the masses are going to do, not 100% anyway, it's ALL based on supply and demand, high supply ( sellers ), low demand ( buyers ) and price drops and vice versa, it really is as simple as that, high or low both and price won't move.
You just added "prediction" to the content of what you had read. A zig - zag chart shows market sentiment changes. Add two slower fractals like 5 minute and 30 minute. Use a simple system of three arrows (30, 5, and zigs) and you see 8 combos that dictate the timely actions. 4 for short and four for long. up , up , up is enter long. down, up, up is enter early long. up, down , up is.sideline up, up, down is "hold through" the signal. the other four for short are opposites. To be a system based millionaire, draw zig zags for 20 days on a five minute fractal. keep a log of the bar where zig occurs and columns for the arrows and a column for what the market dictated. To make as reasoned profit on each entry; set a trailing three tick stop just three ticks I use 100 contracts away from the extreme of the traverse and use as an early exit. trading 5 to 8 ES conracts and sweeping profits weekly on Friday makes about 500,000 a year. this systemic effort takes 20 days to learn and 2 years to become a millionaire. To shorten the time, use 6 to 9 , then 7 to 10, then 10 to 16 contracts. Personally, I have posted opening trades consecutive days using 100 contracts in prints. I know this is a complex system requiring RTM regression lines and three arrow columns. Assigning the action to the three arrow sets will be quite a challenge for most. Programming it all in SQL would take about 1/2 day for slow programmers.
I just trade of an envelope range or 2, wayyy less complicated works in chop or trend/chop or full trend and it's EASY!! Simple theory, odds are market most of the time will stay within my envelopes if I'm on the right side of the trend. ( it extends above, with the trend )
By using the Scientific Method (google this) it has been proven (google this) that the "System of Operation of a Market" (google systems and the three components of any system: structure, process, and results) has no noise, no anomalies, nor any flaws when the system is completely delineated. Markets exist because the owners establish a given market. your vague statement may be intended to be dealing with the "operation" of a market by participants where liquidity exists. Taleb is a fool and he got a book published. Randomness is NOT a characteristic of a market. But many people deal with randomness and it turns out they are foolish. Markets are systemic. therefore, science is used to exhaustively complete the definimg of their operation. Bass wrote about some yo yo's in New Mexico whereby these PhD's found out 3/4's of the way through the book that bid and ask existed. It is hard to use the wrong variable for analysis and further, not know what a market BBid/Bestask is.
I'm sorry to hear about how challenged you say you are. "Most of the time" is kinda corny. Anyways good luck I was just suggesting to you a simple method of making money by using a small amount of money. What I said was that a person uses some money to make money. He doubles his capital every one to three days of trading. 6k of cash in 5 ,contracts on Monday, nets 500,000 on new years. you draw two boundaries, I draw the MLR of the boundaries as a single line. you make money sometimes; I make money all the time. John is giving a lecture on the 26th at 6pm Eastern time. It is sponsored by Genesis on GTM. Call Pete.
Challenged ?? Corny ?? I don't have a lot of spare time to trade if that's what you mean, so a simple open chart and trade, close again is needed for me. Up HUGE on the year, so it's all good!
First of all, welcome back - you're livening things up already. I find it hard to accept randomness is not a characteristic of a market. My physics teacher once made it very clear to me the universe is random and nothing in it can be predicted to a degree of absolute certainty. My response at the time was if you know enough about a process it can be predicted. The problem is we don't know everything about the market and it's participants. We don't know if/when Soros or Surf are about to enter their large orders or if BP is about to have a deep water incident (nor what the reaction will be). You can predict so much, but to say randomness isn't a characteristic is like saying you're God.