there is nothing you can blame about catching bottom and tops. first in every second or in every tick, the market may reverse its trend, for example the markt starts to drop in the opening, what you should do, if you are a trend follower, you instinctly think it is a short sale, so you did, but oddly after you sold short, the market reversed, when you saw your loss gets bigger and bigger, boom, it hit your stop loss, after you you cut loss, oops, the market reversed again, do you short it this time? I bet you become nervous, even you short sold it, the market may resume it climbing again or it may really start to snowfall from there, who knows! but if you are a bottom picker or top seller, in this situation, you played pretty well, he made several round money! like TWB, last week it dropped very hard to 8 under, but after that drop, TWB just kept rising, or in case of ELN, if you picked it at 9.8, then maybe several days late he sold it at 40% gain, or in case of FRE/FNM, the first time FRE droped to 4, I bought it and I made 100% on that, and those airline stocks, when crude hits 145+, I just bought CAL at 7, and sold it at 18+, kind of fun! buy low and sell high is the basic trading principle!
We all understand that, however not to get into a debate I just wanted to point out when you buy into a market continuing to make lower lows, just stop and think Why am I fighting the trend As for the times you mentioned how many times does it NOT work out and how many times DOES it work out I know the answer and I have a feeling most on this post know it too I was just trying to help out some of the traders think before buying onto a down trend. If you are going to buy after a sell off, don't worry let the market or stock or whatever you trade prove it self first, It will always retest after a bounce watch the retest Did it hold or fail ? Good Trading to all Joe Baker
of course I need say, you do not pick every dip or sell every rally, to me, I just bought those panic sell (overdone sell), and I short those HYPE (overdon buy), in order to select the most profitable ones and increase your trading winning odd to 99%, you must excise patience and discipline, you must avoid those "looks like" trades. if a trade is not almost guranteed 99% to make profit, why do it? Warren Buffet is the typical bottom fishing trader, he made his first fortune on picking a bottom! most people lose because they think every movement is an opportunity, they can not avoid those they are not sure, they just play statistical things, but they can not control the downside, how can they make money or not lose? flip a coin is 50/50 odd, but if trading is 50/50, you definetely will lose: why? the commisionn will eat you alive! so you should not play the market statisically my point is you must pick the trade you are almost sure, so you know how to handle it! do not throw away money by playing the market statiscally, one bullet one prey
Joe, I'm not referring to the overall market scale but I know traders that consistently call intraday tops and bottoms. It's all in the price action.
95% of where you can enter in price is either a) unknown of direction b) chop c) no logical movements only 5% is logical and trending. Why is it so much easier to lose? Cause everybody enters in that 95% pricing range.
Winning= Result Losing = Result BreakEven = Result Long = Position Short = Position No Position = Position Buy = Static Procedure Sell = Static Procedure Perhaps you should look at your reasonings for trade entry and exit, instead of "trying" to complicate those things that can not be complicated. Osorico