duncanhoo

1a2b3cppp.....there are plenty of "setups" that deliver a positive expectancy and they are not hard to find on forums. One in particular I just ran on 300 stocks going back to 1995 and 54% of the time it hit a 5% target before hitting a 5% stop (43,000 times). Bias in the data...sure - survivorship for one...Random? I don't think so... Start with something like that (a very slight expectancy) then you have to apply your own knowledge, skill and discipline to make it really profitable. Either you have an innate talent to add the context to the setup to make money or you need to learn it. I did not have the innate talent....and had to learn it - through thousands of hours of work, pain and suffering.

well not all of us were fortunate enough to be... "taught how to trade by a couple of professional traders." and had to find our own way. If you know of resources and teachers for retail traders to become professional traders that you recommend, then please provide them for those that could benefit from them I would have added one more to your "characteristics of retail traders": spend endless hours on forums bragging about their success and disparaging other methods and another to the "characteristics of professional traders": avoid wasting time on forums bragging about their success - rather they recognize there are many different ways to interact with the markets all with varying levels of success

very well put. kicking myself for getting sucked into this thread [quote > I sincerely love threads like this. And I always appreciate the ‘pros don’t use _______’ etc posts ………… Until I recall how many instances I would have been better off just relying on my methods with “charts” and (random) “TA” instead of “the underlying basics of supply/demand/inflection points”, "correlations", MP, books, etc. and other 'pro' techniques... (find your own way) :missy:

what makes an economist's book any more correct than the various other books out there on trading? He may have been fooled by randomness and settled on index funds but i am not. Is it a coincidence that he both peddles index funds and is an index fund manager? I can assure you there is nothing "random" in that correlation. I successfully day trade and swing trade using charts alone and no tape. That said, finding a consistently profitable edge in the charts was not easy and took a long time. The first and most important step on my road to success was to stop listening to gurus, talking heads, economists and most importantly - journalists.

try searching for "stops flexible" and easylanguage for a great trailing stop strategy you could layer into it. I did that on some other things i played around with and it was a great addition.

Sorry - but there are good educators out there someone can learn from and significantly shortcut the learning curve. They are not hard to find either and I wont name them to avoid getting flamed (and wont even do it in PM). What turned me around was comparing my current career to my trading. In my career I am quite successful. To get to that level i needed a degree and 10 + years working in my field with coworkers and managers that TAUGHT me the trade. In addition to that, once i began mentoring others, i got even better. Same thing for trading - lots of education (paid or otherwise) and lots of practice working with colleagues and mentors to significantly shorten the learning curve and learn the right way to do it. Without mentors in my current career, I sincerely doubt I would have achieved the success i have. I concluded that the same was likely true in my trading education. I have paid for education i found to be worthless and have paid for education that was not. Once I realized i needed a mentor and committed myself to that group i went from struggling to consistently profitable very quickly. Now it wasnt the educator that was solely responsible for that, I was doing a lot of things correctly already - but that educator significantly accelerated my learning curve. I also believe that instantly assuming an educator cant trade or is unprofitable is flawed logic. First, many people teach, mentor and educate because they enjoy the helping others succeed. Not every person is solely driven by financial reward (in fact most people are not). Second, just like in any other career there are varying levels of success (traders that are profitable every month vs. every week vs. every day, etc.) and even the best traders can have very erratic earnings. It is perfectly reasonable (and justifiable) for a trader to seek additional compensation through mentoring/teaching to smooth out their personal earnings. All of that said, unless you are willing to work hard (12+hours /day) and remain determined despite very bad days - you will likely not succeed - educator/mentor or not (note the same is true of many careers with high financial rewards).

for whatever its worth, i coded an "automated" strategy for my non-automated strategy. then i used the code to help me optimize my manual trading. For example, I suspected certain times of the day or days of the week were more profitable than others and coding it helped me confirm that fact. I also found that I needed to work on my exit strategies to improve returns. I was also able to assess the trade off of tighter stops vs looser stops etc. I wish i could get it to work on auto pilot but i am not just that good at coding.