Why 61.8%?

summary : confluence

Like I said, I gave you a piece of the answer, you wrapped it in a nice tidy package....thats human nature too.........

you said you would have trouble describing it... which you seemed to. forget it.

I said I wasn't a good enough typer to give the whole answer.....where did I say I would have trouble describing it?

forget it. i'm tired and misread. it's late in my part of the world.

dont worry i think nubcake still got his head in the clouds with santa and unicorns,, probably should stop the meth mate!

all good.............get some sleep........

i'm more a glue and paint sniffer. keepin it real y'know.

Post more please.

But remember, everyone loves "own brand"!

hahaah uh-oh!

throw some old shoes in the oven. you'll thank me for it.

61.8% retrace - golden ratio
U can divide/expand this leg to infinity with same proportion, the purpose of this is profit maximization in given range and given time.
The results most often leads to triangle pattern.

I have be following this thread for a while and saw it devolve to really low levels with i believe really smart people involved. There are obviously 2 camps and neither giving ground. After reading my contribution i think the 2 camps will be siding against me. Please see the attachement. Read it a few times before you rush to judgement.

I know that fibos are not always a tool to enter a trade. THEY ARE FOR EXIT
I do not care whatever is going on here or who started that topic, I know the fact that we can not ignore this tool, because many traders use it.....

Fibonacci = crap. Use it and you will lose your pants.

What I love about forums is that publically admitted failed traders (hint ted and the above) feel a compelling urge to give their definitive answer to open-ended concepts, which ironically, rely on THEM to make it work..

I see your point. However, I'd like to say that I think it takes honesty and humility for a trader to admit that he's not yet profitable. I suspect that there are also a lot of folk here who likewise belong to the "95% club", but are happy to let everybody else believe that they're knowledgeable and successful. Trading and ego, hmm. Anyway, I know which of the two groups I respect more.

I also believe that it can take a long time to KNOW that you've 'made it'. Market conditions can change over time, and it takes a fairly robust strategy to maintain its edge. And many experienced traders occasionally have losing months, or at least lengthy, inexplicable sequences of losses, from time to time. I see the aptness in Keynes' quote "the markets can remain irrational longer than a trader can remain solvent".

I believe that I'm a case in point. I'm definitely more profitable than I was 6 months ago, but the fact that I still have significant losses causes me to sometimes doubt that I'm in the winners' club. I'm still waiting for that "aha" moment to arrive. However, because I've spent a considerable number of hours studying charts and testing systems since 2007, along with the fact that what I'm doing makes comfortable sense to me, leads me to believe that - as long as I maintain discipline - I have a genuine edge.

A lot of trading theory is common sense. I don't think I necessarily know more now than what I did 12 months ago; I'm just more adept at implementing it. Hence I'm saying that, even though I wasn't consistently profitable back then, I believe I DID actually know what I was talking about...... well, at least 61.8% of the time, LOL. So maybe the folk you speak of are at a similar point, and about to turn the corner?

I can easily recall the immense frustration when I was trying to learn. Indicators didn't work, fibs didn't work, apparently nothing worked. Twice I reached the point of throwing in the towel. It made me feel incredibly stupid when I read the posts of folk here making their consistent monthly gains, many of whom were apparently using the same technical tools as I was. I was tearing my hair out wondering what the heck they could be doing, that I wasn't. My ego wanted to believe that they were just plain lucky.

I wholeheartedly agree that just because one trader can't make a tool work profitably for them, doesn't mean that the tool is completely worthless. Every trader starts with a clean slate and ends up using different tools, or the same tools in different ways. For example, indicators might be lagging and lack predictive quality, but they can nonetheless form a useful point of reference around which to 'read' the price action. One person's trash can be another person's treasure.

Anyway, sorry, I've drifted off topic..... will stop now, as I don't want to hijack the thread any further.

I am with Waves on this one. I think the 61.8 mark of Fibonacci helps. Take 38.2 away from 100 and you have this same number again. Like all things trading these two numbers are not absolutes, but they are helping me become more consistent with my trades. Also I have heard of the herd mentality mentioned before and I can see the logic in it. Only learnt this particular aspect of human nature just recently though so it's a bit early to tell if it works for me.

Thanks for the reply,, I agree totally! If it wasn't so late here I would reply with some more detail, but just wanted to re-raise your first point.. regarding the 'humility' of admitting you are in the 95% so to speak.

As much as I basically agree with you, the actual points raised used to justify judgement can in turn become circular, i.e. that the 'humility' we speak of regarding initial admittance is not reflected in the humility when giving personal opinion of certain tools they cannot use in a condescending manner.

As wrong as this is, in turn, who is one to judge that due to them being humbled by the market and are, genuine (?), enough to admit not actually profiteering from fx, that they deserve the right to not be humble when speaking about their failures applied to others' opinion. Why don't actually proven traders use the same attitude in revealing objectivity out of subjectiveness?

Essentially, when, where or how did they receive the right to place their opinion's over others? Because of their said 'facts' which are simply only facts to them? The same circular concept applies to so many arguments in life, and it is simply rooted in speculative extremes, concreted by the fact that at least one party is incapable of viewing possibility beyond their own internalised boundaries.