then explain how 97% of et posters claim to have 'edges', systems, black boxes, money machines & holy grails?
So what's the best methodology. I would suggest discretionary trading where you only trade when the conditions are correct. This is very hard to code as it takes years of study and a sixth sense of sorts. I think an appropriate analogy would be like a sailor who's circumnavigated several times and knows when the time is right to shoot the Cape (s)---although I must disclose that is not me.
I agree, there will always be someone retaining more knowledge than the next guy. TIME is why most lose day trading. Too many start way too soon, no one wants to do the opposite way to learning which is long term trading. Spending a handful of years learning how to make money trading long term first, learning slowly and memorizing Price Action and or TA, learning all you can slowly, having the time to backtest and learn how to code, memorizing "patterns", whether they are price patterns, TA patterns, sequence of looking for setups patterns, Money management patterns. The last thing I want to do is having to "think" what I should do in a few seconds, all the Patterns should be memorized, long term gave me the benefit of years to memorize under stress, cause stress makes one freeze up if you haven't memorized what to do for what sequence of the trade. But what is great, nobody listens, the 95% are like Bait, fish in a barrel, cheese in a mouse trap, landmine in middle of a road, the roach motel, flypaper, water for a drowning man, lobster in a bucket, crawfish boiling in a large pot with a lid,.....
The 95 % can't predict their own future , let alone the future price of an instrument, hence 95% losers.For the vast majority , knowing where price is going will give them the edge to make money.
I don't know if my heart will beat in next five minutes, therefore no one knows where Price is going. Unless you have inside information, and even that isn't a sure thing, this is where faith in your well backtested method comes in. Knowing the stats of the Patterns that were tested. Knowing every single thing that can go wrong and what to do. Another point that seldom comes up, what do you do if you lose your cable feed, what do you do? What do you do if your backup fails at same time too? What you do if electric goes out and home phone needs power, how much battery backup do you have? These are all "What if's" problems that do occur.
The gathering of more than 90% ET posters claim to be a successful trader. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=220849 Unbelievable losers pretending to be a guru traders lecturing losers. That is a scam
This is elite traders , more than 150 % are successful traders, if we ignore those removed the loser indexes because they have all blown their accounts , and no longer trade , just like the stock indices where the enrons are never accounted for.