I can tell you how this strange thread helped me. I did what I think most "traders" do for years unfortunately. I read some books & tried to make money. Didn't work, so I found some other books & lost money. Then I tried some other books & lost money. Then I moved on to the forums. I tried Woodie's CCI & lost money. I bought a new book & lost money. Went back to the forums & studied Anek's AHG method & lost money (excellent thread though I think). Then I started reading strange writings like this thread, and for the first time ever it clicked that I needed to start THINKING for myself, not searching for another book or somebody else's method. It sounds dumb, but it's true. We are taught ever since we are kids to learn everything from books or from "experts". They don't really teach us how to think for ourselves, at least in America. So now I really try to think about things, not just in trading, but in other areas instead of listening/relying on somebody else. I'll still read books in the future & read postings such as NoDoji's which I find helpful, but I'll just pick out whichever nuggets make sense & add them to my own method. So anyway I blame the education system for my market losses, and I plan on suing them for damages. "In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books." Michel de Montaigne
Snake, Thank you for your poison. Everybody could use it to cure their wounds. ... The Oracle, Snake is what we needed here, IMO. You are the only guru I listen to now in the entire universe. I don't know how many, but I'm definitely on the hook here. If you stopped that would be one thing, but you keep on going. Doesn't it bother you that you are responsible for those who listen to you? Maybe one day a supertrader emerges from this kind of teaching, but there maybe one that will throw himself from the bridge. Coming to this thread is like going to church and listen the speeches that are to help you understand God! Sometimes I like to think about the universe. Thoughts disappear and you just fly into the infinity. Everybody has done that. It feels good. It improves my mood and clears my mind a bit but what it's good for otherwise? You post a chart, for example. Where's the title for it, what is the task. Next time you post, how do I know it's a follow up. There's no closure either. I put Jack Hershey on ignore because I realized that despite the fact that he speaks about a lot of interesting things, ultimately what he speaks about doesn't make sense. Yes, we started to make some progress and as a leader you got sloppy. You just said yourself that we are in a serious business. Well, then why fool around with serious stuff! If you don't like it you may leave you might say. Well, maybe I will. But it would be very sad to learn one day that I left because you failed. Yours sincerely, rossky
You have done what everybody is doing and there is no other way of doing it. It's just you have reached the point where you got wiser and tired of pain and refuse to give up and crave for change. ... A man bought a loaf of bread and ate it, then another one and another one, then he bought a small cookie and ate it and hunger was gone. The man told to himself then: "What a fool I'm, I should have bought that cookie first." ... I appreciate what The Oracle does, I really do! A bit more transparency, facts about how the markets operate wouldn't hurt. More structure, more systematic approach! And that's only to cover the basics, over and over again! Ultimately, it should be one on one tutoring, for the best results!
Everybody must watch! On minute 9 you will understand why we fail. Listen the entire talk carefully to understand what kind of impossible task The Oracle is caring on his shoulders. Besides the fact that you must find your own way and certain things on how the markets really operate and how we should trade them to extract the money (the concept we yet to grasp), that video IS about the obvious (once again) and why it is not so obvious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs&feature=youtube_gdata_player Enjoy
As I said before but this time emphasising two key words: "Confirmation is that thing in your process derived from price charts that convinces you that a potential trade is in a low risk area and that timing is correct to start a trade. " Confirmation does not mean certainty, it means having sufficient information to make a decision despite knowning that the decision could possibly be incorrect. Over the past few years my job has involved radar seekers, detecting targets in a noisy environment, uncertainty and deception is the norm. When dealing with target detection the first step is to specify an acceptable false alarm rate, i.e. when noise alone could falsely trigger a detection. That provides a detection threshold which defines the probability of detection when a target is present. A confirmation process then follows where the radar performs repeated looks, and if say 3 out of 5 looks result in successful detections then the target is considered to be confirmed and tracking starts. Thats only a sketch of course but the point is that at no time is there any certainty. In fact the signal being tracked could be a false echo intentionally generated, and if the signal suddenly ceases then a search and detection process starts again. The algorithms within the radar software are designed to act and react to the uncertain environment in which it operates. Same is true for traders - obviously. In this situation the underlying probability distributions are known unlike in trading (as far as I'm aware), but there are some similarities. Risk is predefined, false alarm rate = stop loss. There is a confirmation process to decide to track a target = enter a trade. Surely we should have a rational method for deciding (confirming) when to enter a trade, for otherwise the alternative is to trade haphazardly by gut feeling. What do you mean by simplified thinking other than thinking logically and behaving rationally?
I think there are simple methods to tell you when to enter and when to exit a trade, they have been around for a long time but we seem to prefer complicating things by adding extra shoite on our charts we don't need,however markets have become more complex in the way they move (we can't have them too obvious now ,can we?) so you'll have to know when fakes are likely to come and be prepared for them, which is easier said than done. I don't trade one timeframe and i have a simple rule i follow, when PA is too messy in a fast TF i look at higher ones so i don't get lost in the noise and vise versa and this is where multiple screens help. I suppose when PA is messy it is also telling us something. Ohh, you may take the above with a grain of salt as i'm not a guru just a guy voicing his opinion
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/montaigne-essays-1.html#II. To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections; otherwise you make nothing but so many asses laden with books; by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful learning to keep; whereas, to do well, you should not only lodge it with them, but make them espouse it.