My edge changes with the markets over time. In the late 80s early 90s it was a simple time of day based breakout methodology in the stock index futures. Also in the late 80s and throughout the 90s it was trading new tech/small cap growth funds as they were offered by various fund families (the new fund effect) also, and this was the closest thing to a free lunch as there ever was on Wall Street, there was the datelining of international funds. But what has made me the most over the years is simply the edge provided by trading the open end junk bond funds. Seems traders are more interested in the junk ETFs (which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole) or are turned off with trading anything that is priced end of day.
My edge is not listening to any of the BS that YOU spout. You contradict yourself on so many levels . How many personalities do you have anyway? Time for some meds perhaps?
Careful on personal attacks, I got a pm today for bad wording that could be a personal attack. Until I read your post, I was thinking if I was the only one who had that opinion.
This pretty much nails it: "The reality in trading is that you are your own edge. Itâs in the gray matter between your ears. More specifically, your edge is your ability to adapt to whatever you see in the market. Call it cognitive flexibility, or whatever you want, but this is the reality of trading." Douglas talks about this in his book, Trading in the Zone, and he refers to it as "just knowing" or having the ability to "intuitively" read the markets. It's like having a 6th sense. You're just tuned into the movement of the market.
The âEdgeâ in trading should be expressed as a percentage you expect to make on every dollar invested. Not on every trade but over the period of a year or 100 or more trades. Casinos have an edge on every game. It is calculated over a large number of samples. By back testing and keeping accurate records of actual trades a trader will be able to calculate the edge for any strategy. My calculated edge based on actual trades is 1.8% or for every $1000 I put into a trade I expect to make $18. No I donât make that on every trade, sometimes more sometimes a lot less but over the period of a year Iâm fairly confidant that I will come close to that number.
Right, you have to have positive expectancy to justify saying you have an edge and it has to be big enough to persist after transaction costs are included.
+1 +1 one can't rely solely on systems , charts .t/a ,methods and set ups alone , otherwise we would have a lot of successful traders.
Why do you assume a lot of people have real systems, methods, set ups? Most trade stuff with a 50% success rate with an equal RR and then start perfecting that non-existent edge, then wonder why they fail. With systematic trading, you should rarely interfere as that defeats the whole purpose of it. You shouldn't classify any positively sloping equity curve as an edge as most of the time it's just a curve fit and by definition not a successful method.