The thing is, I understand AOW (or at least most of it and at least I think so or I'm pretty sure I do) and use and have used it in a lot areas of my life (I know how it feels to know that you're right or have the upper hand... maybe that's just ego although I think there is a fine line between the two), but when it comes to trading, I just can't seem to grasp some basic fact which makes me totally clueless of the battlefield. In various things that I am experienced in and am good at, I've experienced what the AOW teaches and I use these teachings to great effect. The problem with FX appears to be that no matter how much screen time I put in, I still don't understand the battlefield. It's all just a bunch of lines to me. All I know is that after the fact analysis tells me that I was wrong. So when I look at the now, I honestly can't tell where the market is going. I've just got intuition based on experience which urges me deep inside that this is a good time to buy or to sell. Sometimes it pays off, most of the time I'm wrong. I think the main reason why people search for the holy grail is because they are in this same boat. They look at the markets and don't see anything which would lead them to put on a trade. Call it what you will, they see no logic, or reason or whatever, but at the end of the day, that is what most people see or more precisely... don't see.
So when they see people who are profitable in markets, they immediately look for secrets that those people possess, which enable them to be profitable. When people suggest there are no secrets, they don't believe them and they maintain on the same path. When you talk of analysis, what sort of analysis are we talking about? What secret do you possess that I do not? Do you see what I'm trying to say? It's a paradox which I can't get my head around.
If you are system trader then that proves that there is some logic to trading because that is the assumption that must prove true for systems to work. I've got a program which does make money. So I keep thinking there is a secret out there that you must uncover to become successful. The problem with this is 2 fold.
1st, if markets are just like Brownian motion except not i.e. they are not perfectly random which they aren't otherwise you wouldn't be able to have consistently successful traders... well you might but that chances of that would be so tiny that it's not even funny (or so they say). Anyway, I agree with this and believe it to be fact i.e. markets are not perfectly random. So what you might say, well... if they are not perfectly random, then the question simply becomes finding the right amount to bet at any given time and for that... all you need to do is find the right formula. If this first case is correct, then the secret is the formula. Also, I think this means that markets are a stupid game of chance from a speculators perspective. Maybe they are and I'm a hopeless romantic thinking otherwise and maybe the whole point of this thread is teach exactly what a lot of books are saying i.e. that entry isn't the most important thing in your trading, it's also your exit but more importantly MM.
2nd, if the 1st case isn't correct, then the only other possible solution is that people that are successful know something that others don't. Because when such talk as "terrain" starts creeping in, there's really no other logical solution to fall back on.
So what am I trying to say? Well, firstly, I wanted to put a little more perspective on what my train of thought is and secondly, I wanted to get a little more clarity as to what is meant by terrain.
My earlier post which analysed dealers and their books was shot down for being too analytical/complex/unnecessary... call it what you will. Now I went through a trading day and went back to my gut feeling style trading which I used to do and lost and now I'm told to analyse more. You can understand where my confusion is coming from. What's their to analyse in a bunch of lines? One goes up, one goes down, the only thing you can do to make sense of it is to delve deeper and start looking at things such as those suggested by fti in early threads e.g. understanding market structure etc etc. Getting back to my dealer example.
So basically I'm confused as to what I should be looking for because for as long as I've been trading, simply trading from gut has yielded lets say no results because for a long time I was breaking even most of the time and todays 1 off trade can't exactly be called indicative of a consistently losing performance.
Should I be simply looking at prices and deciding whether the current place would be too risky to enter because of support or resistance levels or lack there of would mean that a rescue trade would be impossible in this circumstance? If so, then how is this not the same as the first case I described i.e. how is this not analysis of a market which simply a stupid mans probability game in which case it almost doesn't matter where you enter or exit as long as your position sizing is correct?
So when they see people who are profitable in markets, they immediately look for secrets that those people possess, which enable them to be profitable. When people suggest there are no secrets, they don't believe them and they maintain on the same path. When you talk of analysis, what sort of analysis are we talking about? What secret do you possess that I do not? Do you see what I'm trying to say? It's a paradox which I can't get my head around.
If you are system trader then that proves that there is some logic to trading because that is the assumption that must prove true for systems to work. I've got a program which does make money. So I keep thinking there is a secret out there that you must uncover to become successful. The problem with this is 2 fold.
1st, if markets are just like Brownian motion except not i.e. they are not perfectly random which they aren't otherwise you wouldn't be able to have consistently successful traders... well you might but that chances of that would be so tiny that it's not even funny (or so they say). Anyway, I agree with this and believe it to be fact i.e. markets are not perfectly random. So what you might say, well... if they are not perfectly random, then the question simply becomes finding the right amount to bet at any given time and for that... all you need to do is find the right formula. If this first case is correct, then the secret is the formula. Also, I think this means that markets are a stupid game of chance from a speculators perspective. Maybe they are and I'm a hopeless romantic thinking otherwise and maybe the whole point of this thread is teach exactly what a lot of books are saying i.e. that entry isn't the most important thing in your trading, it's also your exit but more importantly MM.
2nd, if the 1st case isn't correct, then the only other possible solution is that people that are successful know something that others don't. Because when such talk as "terrain" starts creeping in, there's really no other logical solution to fall back on.
So what am I trying to say? Well, firstly, I wanted to put a little more perspective on what my train of thought is and secondly, I wanted to get a little more clarity as to what is meant by terrain.
My earlier post which analysed dealers and their books was shot down for being too analytical/complex/unnecessary... call it what you will. Now I went through a trading day and went back to my gut feeling style trading which I used to do and lost and now I'm told to analyse more. You can understand where my confusion is coming from. What's their to analyse in a bunch of lines? One goes up, one goes down, the only thing you can do to make sense of it is to delve deeper and start looking at things such as those suggested by fti in early threads e.g. understanding market structure etc etc. Getting back to my dealer example.
So basically I'm confused as to what I should be looking for because for as long as I've been trading, simply trading from gut has yielded lets say no results because for a long time I was breaking even most of the time and todays 1 off trade can't exactly be called indicative of a consistently losing performance.
Should I be simply looking at prices and deciding whether the current place would be too risky to enter because of support or resistance levels or lack there of would mean that a rescue trade would be impossible in this circumstance? If so, then how is this not the same as the first case I described i.e. how is this not analysis of a market which simply a stupid mans probability game in which case it almost doesn't matter where you enter or exit as long as your position sizing is correct?
).