I am studying under 2 mentors, one of them a pro trader for 22 years. The key according to my friend the pro trader is to figure out how to buy low and sell. Of course I told him, that's obvious. Now I must work on the riddle and apply many methods to a chart on a 5 minute, 30 minute, 60 minute, and a daily to find out what methods can show me when a market is low or high. Something I have found that is very helpful is to backtest and forward test on a simulator. Make sure it is a good simulator. I use TT's X Trader from Velocity. Many simulator will let you get filled whereever you want, that's not realistic! Test your method constantly, how much did it move, drawdown, how ofen was it profitable? What is the winning percentage? I have found some things that work over 90% of the time for several ticks, so now I am looking at scalping mutiples for 3-4 ticks, becaue I day trade. I am sure all of you who have been trading awhile know the things I mentioned, hopefully though this will reach someone with less experience than me.