Disliked{quote} Hi alphaviech, An excellent thread. I am particularly interested (and agree) in your statement that profitable trading perhaps requires an unnatural thought process. Could you elaborate on what you see that as being? Many thanksIgnored
1) Humans like certainty which is something you will never have in trading. Seems like everyone is looking for some holy grail that always makes money which is something that doesnt exist. EVery system will lose money at times and every trader will lose money at times. And you have to accept that losing is part of it and embrace it so that you dont make a lot of mistakes simply bc you are scared that a position that is currently profitable will turn negative for a bit. I think that also goes hand in hand with the tight stops that seem to be used by a lot of retail traders. I mean how likely is it that you will sell at the exact high? You just have to accept that you will be in the red for a bit with almost every trade you take
2) The second thing is much more important bc the times when you can make a lot of money is in periods of extreme volatility. In these times its human nature to go with the herd which is almost always wrong. I mean look at the last few events that caused extreme volatility - SNB decision to remove floor, Brexit, Sterling flash crash and Trumps election. In every single of these events there was a panic reaction that was completely overdone and if you look at a medium time horizon of a few months you would have profited handsomly if you would have taken the other side of the panic reaction. ----- Of course when you trade in times like these you have to be incredibly careful with position sizing
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