The obvious pre-requisite to trading profitably is finding a method which has been proven to consistently make money. Without a proven method, you'll never make GOOD money no matter how disciplined you are at money management. There is a lot of misdirection in this thread but the one thing NY/TE/TO never reveal is the actual method they use. If you are hoping to discover this, forget it. If you accept that trading is gambling, and it's mostly a game of chance, then at least you will see how ridiculous all the pseudo-scientific BS peddled by so-called experts really is.
Ah, The Obvious...nice to see you make an appearance. I accept that price direction (for me anyway) isn't something I can predict with a great degree of certainty, so I must have proper control of losses. There's been a great amount of chatter on the web over the last decade or so from people who claim to have decoded the mystery of price's path ( I don't mean on this thread). It boils down to price HAVING to move from target to target in the higher (monthly) timeframes. Maybe by working out what positions the institutions likely hold and what price levels it would be beneficial/ unbeneficial to violate can reveal these targets? Of course, price does not move in a straight line and fractal games are played in each smaller timeframe which makes it almost impossible for the average retail trader to hold a position from target to target. With extreme patience, the trader can wait until the very extreme of a monthly target area to initiate trades with seriously huge potential R:R. Do you try and track the path of price from monthly charts down, or is that something that doesn't bother you? Are you comfortable using the method you have developed without regard to what happened last year, last month, last week..even yesterday? Regards RR
Clearly they don't consider trading to be gambling, otherwise they'd realise this was a silly and ridiculous quest. As for price direction, I just guess and try to get better at guessing. Surely, with practise, I can guess better than a coin toss?
My take from this thread: 1) trading is gambling (betting) 2) so all you can do is try and put the odds a bit in your favour 3) the most important thing to focus on is the entry (get this right and you're more likely to win; get it wrong and you're more likely to lose) 4) a good entry is one where price is more likely to go in the right direction from the start 5) good entry = low risk (because there's less chance of it ending up as a loss) Current ponderings: 6) price is more likely to go in the right direction from the start (good entry) if it was already going in the right direction when you entered (momentum) 7) if price is choppy (directionless), try a different TF to see if that offers a good entry (ie. choose the TF that offers the best chance of winning) . .
Hello Ed, Not to forget about 8) good entry gives enough "room" to reach the TP. Today, I found trading to be difficult, especially in relation to the "room". A lot of support changed in resistance. GO
BTW: I know exactly what to look for. It was a long journey and a lot of hard work. Decent screening is key. If you do the work the screening will narrow down to a few excellent possibilities. GO
Thought experiment, based on Charlie Munger's principle of "invert, invert, invert" (basically the same as Sherlock Holmes "eliminate the impossible"): What is the obvious NOT: 1. A guru 2. A trading system, or anything that views the market from the trader's perspective 3. A technical analysis method, because nysestocks did not use indicators 4. A holy grail, because he claimed many times that no one knows what is going to happen 5. Risk management or position sizing, for "obvious" reasons! No edge.... 6. Following the news or Cramer, who he called a monkey 7. Acting on impulse Therefore, we are only left with a few remaining options. 1. Telepathy - reading other traders minds? 2. Sentiment analysis - something based on extremes of opinion (one purpose for ET?) 3. Flow analysis - seeing other leveraged traders positions (GS does this but not OP) 4. Theory of maximum pain. Act after yuuge numbers of muppets capitulate? 5. Order from chaos, creative destruction, trigger the avalanche. Pelosi is now the judas goat?
Actually, not true. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/posts/2340852 '...the so called "holy grail" of trading, as it does indeed exist, but only for a very very small minority!' https://www.elitetrader.com/et/posts/2344038 '...the real "holy grail" of trading, which does exist for the very small minority.' https://www.elitetrader.com/et/posts/2344075 'I will go as far as I can go - but I will not ever disclose the real "holy grail" of trading, for obvious reasons.'
But do you believe him? If not, then what does that say about the rest of his posts? If there's no "holy grail", maybe there's no "obvious" either?
Whatever it is, my money is on order flow because they're paying to see me hold a few hundred shares in my etrade account. I swear thay know when I cut losses because the move I was positioned for will not begin until I'm out! If anything is free, you are the product......