MightyMouse

TITZ will lead a lot of traders into thinking that all you need to do is find an edge, which is not clearly defined, and trade it and you will take money from the market in a similar fashion to the way a casino takes money from players. Nothing can be more misleading, especially if you know how a casino really works. The edge he speaks of seems more like a set up than an edge. There are plenty set ups which will lead your account to hell if you trade them religiously.The book gives the trader hope, but I think it leads him down the wrong path. I do not know if he actually trades or not. I made the assumption that he does not. Shame on me.

When I first read it, I thought it was good, then as I learned more and more from practical trading experience, I realized that his main audience is fledgling traders. If you are lost and need help I suppose learning that you have to be in the right mindset is good, but if you are lost and need help, you should really go do something else because there are a lot of traders who are not lost and do not need help and they will steal your lunch right from under your nose. There has to be a point where you call it quits. In life, perseverance is important. In trading, perseverance will kill you.

I am going to suggest to the Site Owner that, before anyone is allowed to start a new thread, one should first get your OK to start the thread since you know exactly what everyone wants to see, what is dumb, what everyone thinks, how all professionals trade, and how one should act and post to maintain respect in a public trading forum. Then, if it passes muster with you, then it will be OK for everyone else. It would be a waste to let your omniscience fall to the wayside. You are an asset.

"Algorithmic Trading for Dummies" should be a good starting point.

Douglas' "trading in the zone" is a good beginner book. If you reread it, you understand why he writes and does not trade.

There are trade offs. If you want a high win rate, then you have to take small winners and bigger losers. There really isn't a way around that other than a string of good luck which could be misinterpreted as skill. On the other hand, if you want a high R/R, then you have to accept a low win/loss rate. Similarly, if you have a high R/R with a high win/loss, you are probably experiencing a decent amount of luck. Luck doesn't last forever. You can trade with a high win rate and low r/r. I don't care for it and it doesn't sound like you do either.

80 out of 100 winners is impressive. Critically speaking, what is the max you are willing to lose per trade or per contract? Had you got stopped out of your trades that you added contracts, what would the loss have been? It seems like you might be scaling in or what I call adding to a losers. I know others do this and I bet it can be done successfully; however, I am simply negative on the practice. I sense that you may be scaling in and then getting out break even or close to it. I could be biased by your "newness", but that is an incredibly destructive practice. It amounts to adding risk when you are losing, thereby maximizing your losers, and removing risk when you are winning, thereby minimizing winners. Your winners seem to all be smaller than your losers. That is consistent with a high win rate strategy. A string of bad luck and you will find yourself in a deep hole that is hard to come out of with small winners. Bad luck means that the current market conditions are no longer what you thought they were and you fail to adapt. Lastly, Its hard enough to master one market. You seem to be all over the place. I simply think that a trader is better off learning the behavior of the participants of one market and trading that market. I hope you figure it out.

Hey don't call me a half wit and there are 30 of us.

There is a wealth of information being distributed here.

TN, if a market moves in your favor 8 ticks, you can't get out at will. We can even say the same about entering, but we can always avoid the trade, if we do not get filled. I know you know this, but I see that others don't consider it. You will get taken out if the market hits your 8 tick stop. You can only guarantee yourself 7 ticks if the market moves 8 ticks from when you get in.

If you are getting out in a 8 tick move plus or minus then you make 3 bucks a trade. You can only get 7 ticks if the market moves 8 ticks. Unless you have the ability to sell at the ask or buy at the bid to exit with 100% fills. I am not talking theory. If you are getting out when it moves 9 ticks in your favor or 8 ticks against you that is a different story. That is not a 1 to 1.

When I trade, I pay the spread and commissions. If scalping you will definitely pay the spread. 22-33 depending on if you trade 2 or 3 contracts.

Pardon me for injecting a little reality into the thread, but to make 50k a year trading 2-3 contracts with a 2 point stop, and risking 2 pts to make 2 points, you'd need to be right 60% of the time and would have to take 22-33 trades a day. One to one trades at a 60% win rate gives you a net of about $3 a trade. If you can find that many profitable opportunities in es, then $50k a year becomes possible trading 2-3 contracts; otherwise, it is fantasy.

$270 a day sucks compared to 5%. You have a long way to go. I think both of you guys have figured out how to buy at the bid and sell at the ask on every trade.

Ah, then a mere mortal like me would crawl 50 meters naked over broken glass just to have the opportunity to get a mere sniff of your flatulence.

An average of 5% a day. Do you mean that you take the winners and losers and add them together and divide by the number of trading days and you end up with 5%? Or, do you remove the losing days and only add up the winning days and divide by the number of winning days? Please share Mr. Jones.

Let thou amongst us who hath posted a live trade cast the first criticism at UrmaBlume

Show that the new approach isn't as funny as the old approach. Without such proof, they are equally funny. It's time for the acid test.

Most people struggle with the idea of being wrong. A mental stop? I am not sure why anyone uses a mental stop. Is that for a real trader? That is really crazy. It is as if one thinks he is smarter than the market. He opens the door to trading with unbounded risk. A stop isn't where you are right or wrong; instead, it is where you no longer want to take risk at a particular moment in time. Not using a stop means you are willing to accept continuous risk and that is simply insane. If one struggles with being wrong, then he should really consider some other vocation.

It seems to me that people feel like they will lose something more than money if they post live trades. I have tried endlessly to get others to post trades. My feeling is that if you are going to say you are capable of doing something, then you should be willing to show it. I did it in the S&P 500 short term trading log ( I think that is the name) and I do recommend it. You will feel a bit vulnerable, but that feeling passes and as your ego gets tamed. A tamed ego is important to a trader.

I hate to use the term, but it does sound like you had a bit of beginners luck. If you did get a way from your plan, you may have fortunately stumbled on some strategy that is better than your plan would have produced and you may want to explore if there was a rhyme or reason to what you did do for the month. Under normal circumstances, getting away from your planned trades is the kiss of death. Or, at least one of the kisses of death. There is a very good chance that you may have developed a habit that will destroy your account. The market does have a way of wiggling its ass in front of you for you to go for it only to find yourself bent over receiving something that you intended on giving instead of getting. A lot of "seasoned" traders fall for it over and over and over. On the other hand, you may be a newbie trading prodigy. There is a lot to learn and for your sake I hope you have a whole lot more than 25K.

I would be willing to pay 100 bucks for that system. Heck it sounds like a great system.

This is the bernanke speech transcript from 2004 when he takes takes credit for the "great moderation". It is such an awesome display or both arrogance and, subsequently, ignorance. FRB: Speech, Bernanke--The Great Moderation--February 20, 2004

The article makes sense since pension funds are frequently not equipped with staff to take invest in high risk, high leverage, high return investments. The easiest way to do so is to pay someone else with the know how. In spite of their under-funded-ness, they have a lot of money. I do not doubt that a CNN reporter misinterpreted data and wrote an article by a deadline.

I am not suggesting that no one can make money trading or that no one can beat the market. I am certain that there are people who can beat the market, and I am certain that we all can't beat the market. I personally do fine with the amount of risk I am willing to take. Buy and hold, for someone like myself is far too risky even if in the long run I would, possibly, be better off. What happens in the long run, may or may not correlate with what the market does during the period of my lifetime or yours.