sergso

Good article. To me quant trading means having a solid measure of risk and reward for each trade. This can be done with statistical analysis (t-test, Monte Carlo, etc.) One drawback is that the future may not resemble the past and the statistics will not be valid. Using the most appropriate analysis to measure risk and reward can make the difference. IMO backtesting setups in many markets increases the significance of any statistics like it is done in this website that uses come concepts and a methodology useful to quant trading. .

Nothing about virtual trading is realistic. Imo the e-mini contract is a very efficient market with very fast robots and thus hard for humans to make money with intraday trading. I guess some will out of luck alone. Good luck anyway.

Stop hunting is a byproduct of everyone trying to win. At the end of the day stops will get hit. If someone does not like this reality of the market then he must stay away. Besides for most people the market is recreational activity for which they are willing pay a fee. Mike Harris in his blog argues based on statistical analysis results that the markets have been very generous even to gamblers.This is very interesting analysis that claims that about 35% of all traders of SPY have made some money even if we assume they traded randomly that that is based on the distribution of returns of a coin toss trading system.

Good point but this is the name of the game. Can markets operate in more "user friendly terms"?

Price patterns with no parameters seem to work much better than lagging indicators like DMI, MACD, RSI, etc. This blog has an interesting article about different types of systems.

...and your trading method is? P.S. What about another shark who will notice you are attached to some shark?

Your problem is too common so be sure it has nothing to do with your intelligence or ability. It mostly has to do in my opinion with the naive ways to trading you were exposed to through reading of books, associations with self-proclaimed gurus and article reading in the Internet and trading magazines. I do not know the details of what you do but in general to make money you have to move beyond what is common knowledge about trading. A few very important things in my opinion: (1) Be adequately capitalized (this is a must read article for all new traders) (2) Aim at a high reward:risk ratio. If you have a low R:R you need to be correct very often and that is hard, if not impossible. (3) Leave intraday trading to the experts and robots. You cannot compete with that class or you will lose everything and they will have a nice time with your money. Learn first how to win in position trading with wide enough stops and large enough objectives to have a high R:R. (4) If you will use technical analysis make sure you can use it better than the experts otherwise they will enjoy your money. (5) Avoid leverage and trading on margin. Eventually your lenders will get you. ...and do not quite trading, just downsize until you understand what is going on because now you do not. Good luck to you.

Good traders do not case if the market will rise or drop. This is of concern to investors. My trades last from a few hours to a few days and I use detrended data anyway.

"I’m about to pull out what little hair I have left. I keep running into the same brick wall over and again. I’ve been trading 5 years and I win consistently when "play money" is on the table. But the moment I move from paper money to real money and really risk my capital, things just go haywire. And I don’t know why." The answer is easy. When you stop paper trading you leave dreamland and you enter reality. The only way to learn how to trade is by risking money and doing real trades. Only then you face reality.

1. Why To get rich. 2. Commitment I spend 6 hours trading and 4 more on system development 3. Timeframe and method Short term momentum and reversals (swings), EOD, 1H data.. Setups are data-mined by Price Action Lab and the code for Multicharts is also generated by it.. 5. Money management Fixed fractional 1% - 2% of bankroll on each trade. Cumulative risk of all positions not greater than 3% at any time. 6. Product Index ETF, high cap stocks, futures, forex. 8. Platform Multicharts 8.7 10. Computer AMD 8 core CPU. I use 4 PCs, 2 for trading and 2 for development. backups are made daily and full backups weekly.

Good stuff! Looking forward to the next one.

Trading on news is like trying to figure what happens in the universe now by looking at the stars. What you see is what happened millions of transactions before.

or closer to total ruin even if he learns from it unless he learns faster than he fails.

Very true for most strategies. Capitalization is almost as important as strategy but millions start with the hope the odds will be on their side but their are not. Here is a good read on this subject. Actually I consider its author a true guru because he emphasizes risk management and that trading is a probability game.

If you lost money then the market did not go your way, at least the market they are making. I have experienced all sorts of problems with online forex brokers and I gave up on them because of frequent lockouts, spikes and other weird events. Did you ask their support? What did they tell you? My best explanation is that your they have very wide spreads and when your limit order was hit it was filled a little below your entry price.

But any knowledgeable person would take the gold and run

Any way you propose doing that other than spending all day looking at each and every post?

I recommend highly this blog The guy knows what he is talking about

When a taxi driver, a barber, a stripper in a club or your son's girlfriend to name a few in a club tells you to buy something it is in a bubble.

I am turning bullish on gold and have the feeling that there will be a severe plunge in the stock market soon. Just a feeling. I know it's not good to rely on feelings but I handle them with options:)

Update your browsers. Chrome is better. If you use IE 8 trash it. I have no problems whatsoever.

The best way to survive a losing streak is not to have one in the first place.

+ good post. I think there is also possibility that something else will replace gold as inflation hedge/safe heaven status soon.

There is an indicator that is based only on price without averaging and moves between 0% and 100% like an oscillator. It was developed by Mike Harris in the 1990s and described in his books - called the p-indicator. It is implemented in his software which is expensive for retail traders. I figured out that the concept behind it has to do with ensemble averages. He is using it to estimate directional probabilities in his blog.

I cannot find the link and I do not remember the name now but a well-known blogger and trader has shown with math that leverage above 3x is plain disaster. I think so too. High leverage is a compensation scheme for brokers and market makers to take the money of the newbies.