I wasn't making light of it, sorry if it sounded that way, was just trying to organize replies into rules so rule 1 was get flat and wait and your rule 2 was have a plan
to each his own, but my style sees it the same way you do. I am almost always in. I figure whatever I have on is probably as good as whatever new position I am going to put on, plus I save one spread and commission. Also agree on frequency of trades. I don't even have to look at the bottom line, I can just look at my trade log. If there are more trades than ususal I know it is probably a losing day. But that's just my style, not saying it's the only style or would work for everybody.
More seriously, winners such as me are better than the 95% since we are in tune with the markets. If you can get your trades to make money 80% of the time and make 3x more on each trade than you loose on loossing trades, you will be a winner. Loosers take too much risk. I never lose more than 5% of my account on a loossing trade. It's called a stop loss. Winners have stop losses.
That's the answer...but they are looking at PRICE it's the ONLY thing that matters They study price and determine probabilities of certain events occurring and many of these events have high probabilities. They place a trade and manage risk. In this game Price is the final arbiter.
I think buying into the sales pitch "Pick winning stocks with my "Method" when the reality is on to manage your money on dealing with losers (first) and winners (second).
I agree. You have to have an extremely high win percentage if your losing trades are bigger than your winning trades.
I used to follow a 'Guru' who did just that, until a few years ago he missed the biggest move in a stock that MET HIS METHOD and I was convinced he knew no more than I. I had developed my own method for finding his setups and I knew exactly what he would be looking at. His intra-day method was so solid, I thought if I adjusted it, it would be even better. After I developed my own platform I tested his method with many different types of exits on many different stocks and I was amazed at how it actually worked over a long period of time. Here he is looking for setups when he could have actually traded the same way every single day and made money...now, that's ironic. There are no GURU's, PRICE is KING! The POWER of a computer is incredible...now, I know more than the guru.
. I'll add to that. I started out following IBD (not being critical) but they completely missed a few boats or should I say rockets. This annoyed me to no end. One stock made their top 100 (I think it came in at 65) after the stock had completely made it's run of about 2 years.