Self Help Regurgitation

Its not what people observe and believe that is necessarily important but rather the progression of how people use that information to make decisions and your ability to quickly recognize that interperetation and structure a strategy that optimizes your opportunity for profit within the realm of the scenario at hand. It is a great and honorable task done consistently only by those that are patient enough to not only recognize the patterns and fundamentals, but who can weigh the disparate forces involved and create a reliable real-time model that enables them to take advantage of the information that they have gathered. When any one of those factors is lacking, a trader should not make the trade. This is why patience is key.

The first part dealing with observation and recognition is not possible without learning or just observing. The market has proven many times to be a much more expensive teacher than many of the books or people you have refernced. Not that you need to agree with every word any one of them says, but you should be aware of their words as many people live and die by their mantras. Just an opinion.


The comparison can be made with a doctor. You may see my heart beat pattern up on a hospital screen and say that the pattern is common for people with anxiety, but to make that diagnosis would be presumptuous. There are many more factors that need to be taken into consideration.

Once a doctor makes a diagnosis, it is still not certain that it is true. They structure therapy around their high probability scenarios to maximize their chances of successfully treating the underlying root cause. Nevertheless, they still monitor your vitals closely as well as other factors, in order to make sure that everything is moving as planned. If they are to find that their diagnosis is wrong for whatever reason during the monitoring process, they stop immediatly and move back to the drawing boards.

A trader needs to be as meticulous and calculating as such a doctor, and to reach that level of professionalism is no easy task - especially when denouncing those that have dedicated their lives to witnessing and recording those phenomena that you wish to comprehend.

"Enjoy these quotes
You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, that depends on you, and not on someone else, because in this there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour."

Bllllimey. Are we talking about forex or have I stepped into a rerun of Karate Kid?

There's obviously no official teacher. And I wouldn't call any teacher my saviour either. But there are people who are successful and make a living from trading forex. They're clearly few and far between, but they do exist, and they do exist on this forums. And some of them really like helping others. I agreed with the original sentiment that there is a lot of sh*te on some of these forums, but in between that there's gold and some great traders and people willing to help. Hallelujah for that

Wow, you seem to be really close minded right there. I don't mean to be brass, but with that attitude of thinking that you can't learn from resources that CAN help you learn, your going to fail at this business. You say candlesticks are useless in forex? Can you give me reason as to why they are? If so, then how am I able to trade various patterns that form at key areas and make a profit off of them? Steve Nison's candlestick patterns are the same thing as James16 patterns; just named differently. There really is no difference whatsoever.
What I'm trying to tell you is, instead of throwing the books out the window, throw your negative attitude out and you'll see that things come much easier. There is profit to be made in this business and there are many resources here to help you do it. It's just up to you if you do. Sorry if that post didn't say things that you probably wanted it to say, but that's the truth that I could come up with and I hope it could help you in some way.

You contradicted yourself with that post. If you'll see in your profile, you say you actually do use candlesticks to trade. Why not encourage the use of them, instead of scaring away people that want to learn them and learn to profit from the correct usage of them?

I think that's a solid point Tdion. There ARE people out there that make a living off of scamming others through the use of Forex. I, however, would have to say that, even though a lot of the stuff in most books is just there to take up space, there are relevant points in just about every one I have ever read. It's not the fact of wasting their money on books and systems, it's the fact of them NOT understanding what they are wasting their money on. You can't trade something that you don't understand. I don't look at it as being brainwashed by books or anything like that, but I do agree that a sense of understanding has to go along with what your reading or else you are wasting your time. I understand, I think, what your first post was about. You just don't like seeing people blindly following things that they probably don't understand, but since THAT person said so, it has to be true. Good point.

tdion is correct, the purpose of the forums is to make money for their owners, nothing more, if this involves perpetuating myths, so be it. This also applies to books, nobodies going to give you the gold for $30. Forums are a good place to pick up basics, but after that it's pretty much thin on the ground as far as good info goes.

tdion, have you read this book?

have you read the market wizards trio of books? livermore is consistently quoted by top traders in those books. the other authors you mentioned are noboy of note, but livermore you should be listening to, he speaks the truth.

i completely disagree with this. forums are a TERRIBLE place to pick up the basics. because as tdion pointed out, most of the stuff on forums is regurgitated cliches.

i think forums are good for traders who already know the game, traders who can decipher bullshit from gold. FF is a great place to interact with other traders, but as far as learning, a new trader is far better off reading books (and i aint talkin about ebooks!).

Yes, I read it. I have to admit, it was rather fascinating that he had such a knack for memorizing the patterns of price quotes.

But honestly, can we really base our modern trading styles on a book written nearly 100 years ago? Those were different times.... different players.... different mentalities.

Yea, just like the Greeks.

"… I learned early that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again. I’ve never forgotten that.…" —from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
(Sorry - Couldn't help it )

If you are looking for entry/exit tips and tricks - then NO - but if u are looking for history and background, for the mental processes that can make you a success or a failure. Then this is an invaluable study.

Merlin as always is absolutely open and right on about his forum. In the beginnning I actually stopped reading the forum for several months. There was just to much noise, I was being pulled into so many directions. I picked up "BOOKS" and studied.
I have been trading a while now and being on the forum is enjoyable for those nuggets you pick up. After a while u get a sense of the BS threads and just skip em.

I think we all might have rose tinted glasses on as far as the general composition of forum users, most forum users seem pretty fresh to me and as a consequence most content in the forum tends to be people asking basic questions over & over, I'm not seeing a dearth of experienced traders interacting. As for the learning from books thing, I also have to disagree, I've read em' all and 99.99% of it is BS, the Market Wizards books are good inspiration but the rest is just rubbish. I learned all the useful stuff from forums (e.g. position sizing for risk, types of orders, basic TA strategies).
I guess in the end, people pick stuff up whatever way they can, I think its just a function of basic intelligence if they can make the jump to eliminating the rubbish.

well, we are making a solid attempt with the TR, and the News section comments are shaping up to be advanced discussion. there is also a ton of advanced stuff scatters loosely throughout the forums. btw, i gave you a vouch yesterday after looking through your posts, once you get a second vouch i hope to see you in the TR

sounds to me like you are reading the wrong books! thats a pretty common mistake i see around here. there are at least 20 trading books that are every bit as good as market wizards. overall, any book written by a successful trader is worth reading. im not talking about someone who claims to be successful, i mean the real dogs of wallstreet et al.

my advice...if you arent *blown away* by the biography of the author, dont read the book!

Learning to trade can be compared to putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. You assemble knowledge from all kinds of sources. Online, Forex Factory in particular and yes trading books are a great resource. Education and our own personal experiences contribute as well.

Even though I have many trading books that I refer to over and over, others may not see the value. There is no rule that say to be successful you have to do what the other guy does.

It has been said that when you put a trade on, the market tells you if you were right or wrong. There is a cost involved, a risk cost even if it the trade turns out to be profitable and actual cost if it tuns out to be a loss.

I look at the purchase of trading books the same way. A cost to find out if I have enough trading knowledge and whether it is up to date as well. Because free sources like the net can only get you so far. 5 pips equals a good book. I'll take that trade any day of the week.

Was a generalized remark as some people can/will continue to be net negative consistently no matter what you give them, working or not.
I.e. it's up to the trader to make things work, not just "the book" was my point.

In a way that also means you shouldn't waste time on buying 5 more books, but instead focus on what matters.

I find most people just write essays defending their status quo to generate a reason why they're unable to move on.


Of course. Didn't we have a thread on this as well? I've also mentioned genetic algorithms etc pp somewhere I think..it's interesting stuff.

This sort of thing of course brings me instantly to "if it's possible, why aren't we all allowed to make 800% please?".

If I want to put say 1000$ for a test into anything like that for 6 months, who do I ask? Where do I go?

(...somone had to invent and program the neural net in the first place still however..it's still going to be people "seeding" the intelligence and pre-shaping it..and all terms and "ways" of applying the learned knowledge has to be expressable again in turn, so it can't ever be "inhuman" if it is human generated..that measure which you apply to the object will be the measure in which your results are returned..a computer can't discover magic is what I mean.)

Say, this just cries out for a "Merlin's recommended reading booklist" thread =)

I thought i should add something to this,

What i would like to add is that all the cliches are useful you just have to sift the wheat from the chaff.

It takes time and practice then you will have your ah moments when you actually understand the cliches.

my Favorite one is "don't trade against the trend" but this is really just a sound bite cliche bandied around way to freely.

It is all fine and dandy to tell newbies the trend is your friend don't trade against it. but really this cliche is super trumped by "Plan the trade, Trade the Plan"

Now back to my friend"don't trade against the trend" I am sick to death of this. I trade PB to a plan and close to 50% of them are counter trend trades. and they are profitable. So the cliche should be "Don't trade against the trend, Unless you have a Plan"

Also the FF has been my biggest resource for going from Newbie to profitable live trading. That said i have had to work at it every step of the way. Learn the lessons and survive. most of all i have had to think for myself. I will listen to anyone that has anything to say (from nebws to 1kters), but just because someone say its so doesn't make it so. I will analysis there statements and see how it fits into my understanding, before i either incorporate it or discard it.

Enjoy
Ademac

A plan is definitely needed to trade, especially in counter-trend trades as you may need to jump out quit quickly (relative to timeframe of course). I hold one saying which I put in my e-book:

"The trend is your friend ... if the trend is your friend"

.. in saying that though, for the beginner, telling them to identify the trend and to go with it is still not a bad idea, trying to predict a counter-trend turn when starting out is asking many a bruised forehead.

Despite i agree with tdion in one way regarding his opinion, i would be more glad to agree with him, if a great part of his posts contained more information about pratical trading.

I'm not saying nothing about your skills, believe me man... I'm just saying that if you are good, its very hard to know based on what you write about live trades. I mean, you don't write nothing.

Anyway....

The way i agree with your main post, is indeed the unnecessary need of lowering our heads to every single person that claims to be a successful trader here in the forum if we want to suceed.

In fact its incredible that with everyone of us knowing how hard is to find ppl to trust in this business, i wonder WHY this genius insist every single day that we should listen to ABCDEFGHIJKL....... in a forum and throw our brains away because they are gods. I think this is too much for me to understand...

What i mean, is that, if there are really ppl that want to show to newbs that they should stop and listen carefully, this teachers MUST stop refering to themselves as if they had unreachable inteligence. This is what happens in these days, period.

Threads and posts like, "you will never suceed", "you won't last much", and above all... posts like "you guys are not like US" are completly worthless considering their teaching value, so open your eyes to the reality and if you guys really want to teach for the pleasure of teaching, stop bragging with uncountable posts like "i live of this... i live of this....."

Make one guy be sucessful... and then let him make compliments about you... Thats the right way...


In other hand, i disagree that we shouldn't pay attention to anyone.
My personal path was reading lots of info on websites about concepts, then seeing more than 100 videos of live trades, then demo trade, then live trade and then i found FF.

I have no problem to say that i had a mentor at the beggining and i still pay attention to this guy. I recently found out that he is registered here in the forum but he only wrote 5 posts in 1 year. (Of course.. he doesn't have time to waste here lol. 1 more point for this guy)

I chose this guy because he followed tech analysis "by the book" (as we all learn in the beggining in sites like investopedia). He never tried to call multi year reversals. 1 indicator and not even used most of the times. He didn't tried to catch falling knifes... he didn't tried to catch rockets and make them go down, he didn't used wierd fibos in wierd TFs, with wierd MAs. He even said sometimes... "there's nothing this week" i will stay out for the next days...

I mean... perfect candle sentiment reading. Trend reading, calm, patience..... The extreme opposite of FF, and i'm considering lots of ppl in the TRoom.

And of course.. he posted many trades before happening...

This is a good teacher... Good RAW analisys and results. Based on ACTUAL TIMES.

Ppl who claim that we should ready 1 thousand old books, are wrong. And its so obvious why. Because if one guy throwed a dice and if it came out odd numbers he would sell dollar with all of his money 10 years ago. He would be rich by now and no one would know that he chose a sell because of a dice.

Of course this is an exagerated example but the point is that... the trends are so strong that many ppl got rich with a 50-50 probability.. UP or Down a few years ago.


What have i learned on FF? ZERO!!
No one trades as we learn. Every guy has "his own way" that he miraculously invented after 30 or 40 years being a taxi driver...

In fact i reversed my learning curve with this forum in my 1 month here. What saved me, was me going on holidays, and i stopped reading this forum. Then when i got back, my brain resumed inteligent actitivy.


Before many of you start to take this as offensive, please allow me to ask something, and give me a clear awnser to this questions.


First. Please tell me why doesn't anyone of the experienced traders intervene when another experienced trader enters into a battle mode with a lot of ppl, and end up being tottaly wrong, after the use of the key words that i mentioned earlier "you will never suceed blah blah..."

Why don't we never see one guy saying, "i'm sorry "X" but i think you are wrong". How can it be possible to one guy to spent 1 entire month saying "this is going to reverse", adding and adding on losing positions and then after being 1000 pips wrong, this guy just abandoned the thread but keeps receiving aplause by senior members?

How can it be possible to one guy that claims to trade for more than 1 decade to say something like "long term trends don't matter... because lets face it... everyone here at FF trades short term." This same guy tried to call the end of the GU trend because of the big drop in august...

How come this guy claims to live of this... and never learned in more than 10 years that trends reverse with failures... not because it dropped to fast to be a correction.



My second main question is...! How can it be possible to pick.. lets say... 10 J16 Price Action traders and half of them believe in a triple digit percentage growth in 1 year, and the other half even trading short term, deeply believe that its impossible to make more than 10 percent?

I know that its an old subject but... how? How can it be that ppl that trade with the same time frames and strategy can have so different goals.


And to finish and above all, how can be possible that the same guy that says.... "hey... you don't know nothing about this... because you believe that we can grow more than hedge funds", but this same guy says to another suposed experienced trader.... "hey you are great" Even knowing that this guy aims for 300% year for example...

This is too much contradiction to stay in stale water...

This is what have to change...! If one guy calls newb to another for aiming to much... but claps a guy that have a goal 30 times above his own. Something is not right. One of them must suck and how can anyone trust with this conditions..

Open your eyes...

I would think that someone that is a Student would like the idea of gaining knowledge from books. Guess not?