Do you think there are specific technical analysis methods, techniques and trading programs that people are unwilling to talk about in forums because they are afraid others will find out about them? Does anyone know of a seminar where you can get exposed to such ideas for a fee? I once read about the Delta phenomenon closed circle of traders who made a lot of money before the technique was exposed by one of them to the general public. Maybe a hoax, I do not know.
One thing that comes to mind is adding to a losing position. In the hands of an amateur, disaster. In the hands of a seasoned trader, one of the most powerful techniques out there.
Amateur traders like the ones at Bear Stearns, Lehman...or the ones at Legg Mason or Brian Hunter...all of which kept adding to losing positions. It was certain disaster for these newbie traders that kept adding to losing positions. Only well seasoned traders add to losing positions.
Buffett has often done it, but he has a very long time horizon, he has done his homework and he has the courage of his convictions.
The reality of trading is you could show people your exact strategy and they will still be likely to fail. Why? Because of emotion. Most people don't understand that draw-down WILL happen. The best story of this is the Turtles. If you have no read the book, I suggest you get it. It's called The Complete Turtle Trader. Basically what happens is a guy named Richard Dennis decides to train a bunch of people to trade with HIS money. Those who followed his rules are millionaires and one is a billionaire, the ones who didn't follow the rules failed.
It has been said that a successful trader could publish a working system, and most newbies would take no notice. I think there is at least some truth in that for two reasons. There is such a glut of useless techniques as to be [nearly] impossible to give everything a fair trial. But most newbies also lack the ability to recognize, much less trade, a workable system when they see it. Despite this tendancy to "hide in plain sight", successful traders live in fear that their best techniques will get found out, and their edge will get ruined.
Turtle trend flowing trading style was and is very difficult to follow. True, those that followed it made money. It has to do more with discipline than with any special edge. After a breakout you had to let your profits run or cut your losses short. Easy to say but difficult to do in practice. To OP: There are several trading methods that are taught in seminars and involve subjects that are not extensively discussed in forums, AFAIK. A few of them have to do with understanding price action. As far as software, there are some programs I have mentioned before that are either too expensive or hard to understand and use, or both. They are not discussed in forums either. One reason is that to have a discussion about them you must first use them and understand what they do. These programs do automated trading system development. This program is quite general but very expensive. It discloses the systems in EL, Java, C# and WL code. This program is relatively cheap but limited to price formations. It discloses the systems in EL, WL, MS, TC, NT, MT, AB code and pseudocode.
Thanks intradaybill this is very interesting but the first program is for something like 60K!!! I tried to download a demo for the second and I got for following responses from the company tradingpatterns.com Thank you for your interest in APS. Currently we do not sell to retail customers in several countries including yours Thank you for requesting a demo of APS v8.0. We apologize but we do not process inquiries that use gmail or hushmail.