TA works fine that is why I had no losing trades this week in real money not sim like Market Surfer who can't even make a profit on a demo account.. It's just that you need to put in 10,000 hours of screen time, 6 years of trading, or pay someone to mentor you. Do you think Doctors become heart surgeons after 1 month of studying medicine? When most good traders make more than doctors, then you will know its not easy doing this or everyone would be a trader.
Not everyone is going to be an expert. You do not have to be close to the market to put the coin in the bottle. His eye was remote from the coin and the bottle opening. I was a heavy equipment operator for years. I moved rock and dirt. My objective was continuing precision so that I did not have to pay for wasted concrete and wasted worker time. The operator demonstrated what you still have before you. And you are in a space that leads directly to failure; your emotions are the result of not knowing what you are doing. as suggested a person can waste 10,000 hours and only get so far and have serious limitations. I spent a month getting operational in position trading. All I did was do a drill that made me operational. I picked high beta stocks and back plotted them for six months to find out if they were repeatable by annotating them. All this involved was using back issues of one page of the WSJ (I subscribed and he had back copies that I shared from another person) and using a brownline of a master I made on velluum by drawing a six months daily chart. So I began by doubling my money every 7 or 8 trades (all under two calendar weeks). Since there was no risk, I did not have the emotions you have. All repeatable stocks look alike. Look at the forklift operator fifty times. Write down what he does. Now look at your last fifty trades. you do not know what you are doing. and this is shown because you cannot write down what you are doing. Do some drills on proper trading. Save yourself 10,000 hours and just getting to mediocracy.
I couldn't get it down to one but these three could be used by that fork lift operator with the Universe selection process that goes with the three indicators. the Universe rules for selection are found in ET on SEP 04 the 25th.
Definitely agree on the point that 10,000 hours spent does not mean they were spent wisely. There is "practice" (one may try to break the brick wall with his head for 10,000 hours and not succeed any much beyond severe damage to himself) and there is deliberate practice, when what you do is eliminate what doesn't work for you and sharpen skills which do work for you. But interested about your "no risk" note. Do you mean "no risk" in the sense of positive expectation or "no risk" in the sense of no risk of ANY of your trades going underwater by any amount?
The title of this thread should be "Why traders do not work". Mav posted in the TST Combine thread: Ain't that the truth! Books, indicators...that's the aspiring trader's equivalent of the aspiring gardener buying seeds from a well-respected source. "Look at these cool seeds I bought! I'm gonna have the best garden! I'll never have to buy food from the store again!" Well, just to get those seeds to sprout, you need good soil, water, sunshine, and the proper temperature range. Once the seeds sprout, you need to continue to provide this environment and then you have to provide protection so insects and animals don't decimate your plants. When the weeds spring up, you need to rip them out quickly before they take hold and deprive the productive plants of sufficient nutrients. Without all this preparation, attention, and ongoing care, you'll never reap the rewards inherent in the seeds. If the seeds fail to sprout or if they sprout but never mature, it's unlikely the seeds are bad. A plethora* of aspiring traders ask for help with their problems: "I studied [price action/fibs/oscillators/MACD/Elliott Wave/breakouts/etc] and I'm trying to apply these concepts and I just can't seem to get it going. I traded the [XYZ signal bar/ABC indicator/PDQ pattern] and I got chopped by the [range/barb wire/head fakes/HFT scum/stop hunters/bleeding heart liberals/heartless neocons]. What am I doing wrong?" I find that every one of them I've spoken with is missing one or more of the collective ingredients needed to turn their seeds into a robust and productive garden. The trading garden requires so much preparation and it does take thousands of hours of work. NO ONE can do this work for you. TA works beautifully, but you have to do the work necessary to learn how to use it. If you read Al Brooks and decide that it's confusing worthless garbage, you are the one confused. Brooks provides the most comprehensive course in technical price action in existence today. He gives you a handful of every seed you need for a complete life-sustaining garden. And yes, it's difficult, because he covers a plethora* of advanced concepts and noobs will have to skip what they don't understand and come back to those concepts later. But Brooks first book is the Ivy League course in price action day trading and if you really want success, the seeds cost hardly anything. * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mTUmczVdik
TA DOES work BUT you have to use it right. When using indicators, it's not WHAT you use that matters but HOW you use them. When people are using the technical analysis, they have to understand the working rationale behind each indicators, how it works and WHY. What does the mathematical formula looks at when they evaluate the PA and HOW they analyze the PA. Same goes for those trading systems. Why the system works and what are the possible fallacies. If you just blindly slap on indicators and/or follow systems without understanding them or how to use them, then yeah TA will not work for you.
Many speak about this yet no one comes forward and clearly states the how or worse claims the how is one big secret. Try a look at the Combine thread, bunch of jokers fighting as experts yet the results clearly state jokers. You just don't know what to believe these days.