I can't imagine humans have any kind of edge... the intuitive stuff is already conquered by machine learning.. hats off though to those who are pulling dough from the market this way.
I voted "other" lol. And in fact I use charts here and there, of course when the trading day starts I like to look at all major markets, daily and hourly charts maybe, to get a general overview whats going on. But when i start to actually trade, I like to have a pretty clean desktop on my screens, DOM(s), quote board with all major markets, economic calendar, news service/ squawk and thats it.
ES, I would not expect the big "AHAA" coming one day. That would be like waiting/ searching for the holy grail. It is more like the concept of Kaizen, small steps every day, each day you see something more, you get more routine with something and so on. People focus so much on perfection, which is very much overrated. I would suggest to not strive for perfection, be it in trading or other fields. This will only drive you crazy. I advice to strive for progression. Continous progression (of course there will not always be a straight line, there will be ups and downs, thats natural, but the trend, your general direction should be up). Continous progression with the goal of being a better version of yourself than yesterday.
dozu888, I didn't ask you what Baron said. I ask a very simple question, I will repeat: Do YOU have any concrete documented (e.g., a poll from traders, broker records, friends, etc.) evidence that scalp trading is a myth and money can not be made from scalping? If the answer is No, please stop stating what can and what can not be done without solid evidence. People are at ET to make sound decisons to make money for the family, etc. We don't have time or energy for bullshit unproven opinions. It's entirely too much goofing off around here lately. Your comments can cause a person wasted time if you saying stuff not true.
Thank you CALLumbus for a well written post. Awesome advice. Great post. I saved your comments I agree, continuous progression everyday. What has helped me alot, is simply starring at the chart and drawing lines and making decisions in the moment. Taking max 2 trades per day and logging what went right and what went wrong. And WHY it right and WHY it went wrong. Treat it like a business. Why is not my business making money and be honest with myself.
You are asking what competitive advantage does a human have against algos ? The answer is: the human brain ! You just have to learn to "program" it, "program" yourself the way you want yourself to perform. How do you program yourself ? Practice, repetition, drill, and some more practice. Or we can just call it: shitloads of hard work. And thats exactly why most people cannot be (very) successfull. Most people are just lazy (especially in the long run). And even if some people give their best, there are always some others who maybe invest some 5% more effort than you. We live in a competitive world. Not everyone can become the president of the US, we need only one. Not everybody can become heavyweight boxing champion. And not everyone can become a high stake trader. 95% of traders fail. That might be true (it can be also 96% or 98%, but the message is: most fail), but it is the same for all other ambitious ventures humans try to achieve: 95% who try to become a fighter pilot fail. 95% of those who try to become president of the US fail, and so on. And especially in trading, this is kind of a natural law: the mass, the crowd has to lose. Their losses make the gains of the small group of the 5% (or less). Without the losers, the winners would not exist. It is all good, the way it is.
dozu888, Do you please have any concrete documented evidence or even a poll from traders that humans have no more edge in trading the markets and machine learning is making all the money better then humans? Please provide evidence with your comments. I would like you to please prove your comments.
I'm asking more about what special inputs are you using that the machine does not have access to. You don't ask the average swimmer to go compete with Phelps. No matter how hard they train, they can't beat him because he has certain advantages... Right now, if you have a set of inputs that can be machine read. U feed it to a human and a machine. The machine can definitely do it without tiring and perform as well , if not better than the human.
SimpleMeLike, thank you for your kind words. Good points you make here. What I like very much, what I think is VERY important and many people have big problems with: to be honest with yourself. People have already difficulties to be honest with other people. But to be honest with them themselves seems to be almost impossible for many. But what does it mean, to be honest with yourself ? It is just the objective analysis of your current situation, be it your trading, your fitness, your job... . And without objective evaluation of the status quo, how do you go from there ? How can you improve, how can you plan the future if you dont even know the present state ? So I think this is a very good and important point you made there. Regarding your trading and your way to improvement, it sounds very systematic. This is a more analytical approach to trading, and it might work if you are trading in a more systematic and analytical style. For those who want to fight in the microtrenches of ultrashorttem trading/ scalping, this might not be the best path to improvement. The nuances, the signals of the market on this microlevel are so fine and interconnected, that it is very hard to quantify them in an objective way (which is one of the reasons why there is no handbook to successful scalping, not even in the top prop firms). Can you teach a juggler how juggle with his knifes, just by giving him a book to read with instructions like: when knife A comes down, try to catch it carefully, while at the same time throwing knife B in the air with the other hand and at the same time watch knife C with your right and knife D with your left eye... No, it would not work like that. A juggler has to be actually engaged in juggling, only that way he will program his brain to be able to... juggle Same for a formula 1 driver. And same for a (very shortterm) trader. And like with juggling and with race driving: the more you practice it, the faster you will progress. Thats one of the reasons why prop firms have countless drills that bring their traders into interaction with the market. Some of these drills seem to make absolutely no sense (like: open a position every 5 minutes and manage it from there, or: make 100 trades this day try to close as many of them with 1 tick profit as possible...). These drills are not meant to be profitable trading strategies. The sense of these drill is only one thing: to bring the traders into as much interaction with the market as possible, as often as possible. Because this interaction, this engagement in the market is what will create the neural pathways in your brain, the pathways that will make you see and understand things that many other traders are not even aware of.