It seems what we have here is the age old debate of teacher vs student. The student blames the teacher, and the teacher blames the student. Doesnt seem to be any solution to it, so the argument continues to resurface and the wheel keeps on turning..... another fun day at the ET entertainment centre...
So many people asked me for help here and it always seemed to turn into a game of "Yes, but..." So I decided to give a little test first to see how serious someone was in wanting help. I'd give a simple "homework" assignment to find a specific setup under specific conditions and do a statistical analysis of it for two weeks of price action. That was the end of it every time.
The problem I had with trying to learn online via teachers was me. The first question I would ask anyone is how do you objectively view the market (before feeding them any jargon). Without that consistency it'd be quite difficult to make anything work, but with it, there's little need for pattern recognition to enter trades (other than to read what the market's telling YOU) BD
The ridiculous thing is, that there is any argument. The solution is, people need to take responsibility. What if you gave someone all of the ability of Kobe (pick your favorite athlete) would they be successful? Very few would, although they have the ability, they wouldn't have the physical conditioning, and they wouldn't do the work necessary to get the conditioning.
Good traders seldom learn much from lessor traders, people who shout the loudest for having chatrooms are those who can't trade well. People talking about politics or sex aren't reading what the charts are saying, they are waiting for others to offer signals, if that isn't a clear case of being lazy I don't know what is? Where I have a disagreement is when OP wants others to be a part of their idea of making calls during a chatroom. It is like people ask me to donate my money to their charities or causes, what I do with my time and money is for me to decide and not for others. Not that it is any of your business, I seldom trade all day long, am still working on my health, I get chemo treatments every other week. Today I made my Goals early and litely traded till 9:00, I normally trade till 9:00mdt and if awake start again at 12:15mdt. During those three hours I normally get a massage three times a week or work out at health club the other two. So are you one of those guys who trade all day long?
3 sell points Good. 1 buy point is a little high but understandable given the market condition at the time.
I believe that trading is a zero to negative sum activity. It therefore follows that the majority would lose to pay the winners, the brokers, the unleveraged large hands, and the long term investors. One would therefore need to be in the top , say 5%, to be among the winners. How to be among the top winners? One needs to be creative and equipped with models that are above the 90+ percent of all models/algorithms operating in markets, and one needs capital. As an example, at the recent top my models were bearish, while others wrote that price action was forecasting bull side as the winning side going forward ( http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=281330&page=5), my modesl were bearish . I like it, particularly when some write they fade my models such as at this page: http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=142338&page=826 . After the fact, my model were right. In AAPL earnings, ET thread was majority bullish, and my models were bearish, and made forecast of APPL in the range of 510.500.483. http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=281724 .My models were right. I was not surprised they were right because majority on the thread seemed bullish. Trading is about the confluence of knowledge and trading capital in one hand, which is rarely possible, because if it were not the case, the richest man on the planet could be a trader. Therefore, if someone has capital, I expect he would among the subpar in trading. This would indicate to me that fading a trader with good capital could be better than trading in the same direction, as he would be missing correct knowledge to consistenty win. Also someone who is popular might also be a good hand to fade, because the reason of the popularity could be an agreement of his views with the majority views. A person I would like to follow is someone who is right and is consistently insulted. It would mean he is in the minority, and the insults would suggest he is right as people might have faded him or envy him.
I tried this analysis twice ( a few months apart ). I noticed a few quirks of price action that I hadn't noticed before, so it was useful, but I could not come up with any specific rules to follow that made money. The setups themselves are somewhat objective, but once you are in the trade it requires a whole different set of skills. ( I say "somewhat" because the context is different every single time. There is no identical setup.......never.) I wonder if it's your analysis that has made you profitable, because when I look back at a chart after the day is over & mark all of the obvious setups that everybody on this site can probably agree on, you are usually in every single one of them. That's a good thing, but I don't see how analysis of setups helps with entry (since you are usually in every single obvious entry that occurs). You're very good at "following" price & very disciplined waiting for the obvious setup to appear. From what I've seen you have an uncanny ability to scratch a trade when it's not working. I have no idea how you figure out it's not working as CL wiggles around all over the place before it takes off sometimes. You're very good at getting out for a smaller profit than your target if it looks like the target won't be hit. I have no idea how you do that as again CL wiggles all over the place before targets get hit. You are awesome at following the strong trend days & really rack up the ticks on those days. Everytime I "think" I see a strong trend day I remember how you trade, & I enter on a buy-stop, put my sell-stop below the pivot low, & I'm usually stopped out instantly (whereas you somehow get out breakeven). Then my so-called strong trend day evaporates into chop-land. I don't think most people can do what you do no matter how much analysis they do, even though I do think it's important to do that kind of work. I think it comes down to something else. Not sure what it is because all of our brains are wired differently, so I don't know the thoughts you go through as you're trading. I think it's almost impossible to try & follow somebody else's trading method. It seems like you can learn a few tips & tricks from other people, but you have to create your "own" method.