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Attachments: Why Can't I Trade?!
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Why Can't I Trade?!

Two trades today with a 20pip loss and then a winner with 127pips which I exited manually at weekly support and resistance level and moved the stop to 120pips on second half which was the old high. The initial trade was taken as the old low 15465 was my entry area plus 5pips to allow for spread etc but was stopped right at the low of day!

The price then failed to break the low on two attempts and so I decided to buy the breakout as flows changed as we broke the morning range

Average win is 25pip now and loser is 13pip with my account now ~40% in red so getting there slowly at present.
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Quoting gravitist
..ask yourself this: WHAT IS MY EDGE? You are completing against the wealthiest mega-banks in the world. They didn't get there by giving money away. So, what is YOUR edge? They hire the sharpest MBA's from top schools like Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge - so , what's your edge? ..
Yeah, they hire so "sharp" people that when the sh*t hits the fan they lose bunch of money & run towards government begging for bailout or else the world is in troubles. Yeah, that really shows their "quality/worth", not!
Or they blame some "rogue" trader for losses! If that would be true, they should lose their bank licence immediatelly for their risk management sucks bigtime! All that to me looks like 4year old kid who has no clue what's going on & not some smart/great/skilled minds of pro's.

Without the government aid a lot of banks wouldn't exist any longer..so I wouldn't see them as some masters to follow. When you get into troubles..you can't ran to politician asking for bailout..sorry, you are on your own.

You need a great trader with feel for the market to make profits & keep profits. That's not something that can be taught at school. Ever heard of LTCM? "Star" traders, matematicians, very intelligent people..and yet they blew bunch of money like any "stupid" retailer. So, I don't see real difference there. Background doesn't matter, what matters is the individual's approach and finding out what works for him, finding his edge. And that's not the bells & whistles..
Besides small trader has his advantages compared to big bank positions.

So, the only worthy information you posted was the question regarding traders edge. Great one, except it was mentioned here more then couple times already.

Btw do you know you edge or are you just bitching around not knowing what's possible for you?
I trade to win/profit.
Quoting Good Lookin
Have you established why you trade?..Life's short.
Great post!
I trade to win/profit.
Quoting gravitist
People trade for one reason - to make money...
Are you sure about that or are you just judging other's by your standards?

I trade cause I enjoy the game, I trade cause I enjoy finding out what the market is up to & whether there's an opportunity for me. I also enjoy the freedom to have it my way.
And I love the experience of the perfect trade..Better then orgasm..& yet so easy & graceful..and great money on top of that!

How does this gets better then that?
I trade to win/profit.
Quoting plukin
{quote} Are you sure about that or are you just judging other's by your standards? I trade cause I enjoy the game, I trade cause I enjoy finding out what the market is up to & whether there's an opportunity for me. I also enjoy the freedom to have it my way. And I love the experience of the perfect trade..Better then orgasm..& yet so easy & graceful..and great money on top of that! How does this gets better then that?
why are you lying to yourself man ?
Interesting thread with lot's of interesting viewpoints.

From my personal viewpoint, I personally think the key to successful trading is to firstly understand what you are dealing with in respect to price action on a short time frame versus price action on a long term timeframe.

Firstly on the short term horizon, price movement is based on trade decisions made from millions of participants with various objectives. A small percentage are speculators like us retail traders but we are vastly outweighed by other major participants that have far different objectives (risk management being a large part of their decision criteria) and these decisons typically relate to a portfolio of assets as opposed to decisions relating to simply a single instrument such as a currency pair.

Given the vast number of participants and the differing objectives there is no hope in hell of being able to determine with any degree of subjective decision making which way price will move in the short term. It is impossible to tell on a chart what is random movement versus non-random directed price action. You just need to recognise that in the longer timeframes (eg. weekly and monthly) that economic factors are giving a slight drift to overall random price movement. In my opinion you cannot visually discminimate on a chart what is random movement versus long term drift, so don't bother with technical analysis tools.

For example here is a chart of a random price series.

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Here is a chart with a random price series slightly biased with a positive drift.

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The only way you can visually attempt to detect non-random price drift is in the way price action is extended in a linear direction. For this you need long term regression tools.

Have a look at the chart below. Is there any way you truly can predict future price action?

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Now if I was to say that this was a randomly generated price series, how could you tell the difference? In fact it is a random price series and here is a great Youtube presentation on the subject.

So with all this bad news, how can you as a speculator take advantage of this inherent unpredictability of the market to obtain a positive edge that is not just a lucky winning streak. In the long term given the fundamental relative strength of currency pairs, we might be able to conclude from fundamental analysis what will go up versus what will go down but that is about it as far as prediction is concerned. You may as well give up on being able to predict the path or the when and the where's. The only thing therefore I base my decisions on is in which general direction over the long term timeframe is overall price trending and use this as my best guess on where I think price may generally be heading.

With this in mind you can then design trading systems designed to take advantage of this very small drift in otherwise random noise. Inherently this means you have to let go of any sense of obtaining spectacular returns for a single instrument over the long term and take a more conservative posture in thinking about 'the next thousand trades'. You can only beat this market using the Law of Large Numbers and understanding probability, statistics and risk management. Anything else in my opinion is just pure luck.
There is nothing random in trading, nature, everywhere. Everything happens for a reason and there is always a precursor to some move weather it be an up, down or sideways. If you don't understand something that doesn't make it random.

In the dark ages people attributed anything they couldn't understand to dark magic. That is what you are doing now.
It's more like sociological side of the matter.
For instance, when I trade demo, I can go all-in, test strategies, etc. without being afraid to lose $
But when it comes to live, something just goes sometimes wrong, because it's real $ and i'm risking to loose it. Sometimes too often
There is a saying if you can't sleep because of your positions in the market..you are trading too big. Reduce your leverage.
Quoting metta87
{quote} why are you lying to yourself man ?
What gives you the impression I am lying? Can't you just imagine what I write about is actually my reality?
I trade to win/profit.
Quoting merquise
There is a saying if you can't sleep because of your positions in the market..you are trading too big. Reduce your leverage.
Crackng saying! I like that a lot.

I also think that if you are not prepared to enter into a trade with a loss, you are also trading to big.

At the end of the day it is all relative- a 100 dollar loss is nothing in a million dollar account, but on a 200 dollar...

Likewise a 2 dollar loss on 200 is manageable just as 2000 dollar loss is manageable on a 2 million account...
Quoting Copernicus
Interesting thread with lot's of interesting viewpoints. From my personal viewpoint, I personally think the key to successful trading is to firstly understand what you are dealing with in respect to price action on a short time frame versus price action on a long term timeframe. Firstly on the short term horizon, price movement is based on trade decisions made from millions of participants with various objectives. A small percentage are speculators like us retail traders but we are vastly outweighed by other major participants that have far different...
Since you edited the post let me answer it like this.

You can not make a random price chart using random number generator and use that as a basis for your theory.

Yoo are committing a number of logical fallacies..one of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi

You are comparing a randomly generated chart with real life chart which has different inputs...you can't do that
Quoting chakle
It's more like sociological side of the matter. For instance, when I trade demo, I can go all-in, test strategies, etc. without being afraid to lose $ But when it comes to live, something just goes sometimes wrong, because it's real $ and i'm risking to loose it. Sometimes too often
In demo you are playing, no big deal, nothing is at stake.. The game changes when you start "playing" with "real money" as you write. Omg, it's real money! Even if it would be just couple bucks (eventhough some would argue it's not a problem then..well, it's the same, it's just way toned down for most to notice..)..and the playfulness & easy just stops right there.
It's all about your (the trader's) relationship to money & wealth & what that is suppose to tell about you or suppose to mean for you. Especially the "having bunch of money" and "having no money/loosing it all". What would that be like? As long as you have "stuff/emotional stuff" around these, playing with real money & thus easy, graceful & playful trading will be too much hardship then it can be. It might even seem impossible.. But that's just an illusion although a persistent one!

So..trading with real money..
What's at stake for you?
What's the buggyman in the closet?
Would you be safe & well having bunch of money?
Would you be safe & well having no money?

Let all that stuff go..and you can really play even with real money & even with plenty of money..and enjoy the heck out of it. Just ease & grace..no big deal, just playing.. After all, life is ment to be lived = enjoyed.
I trade to win/profit.
Is there such a thing as trully random generator? Not according to programmers.
I am of the impression there's a hidden order in everything, just a bunch of all kinds of cycles coupled together as nature is cyclical.
I trade to win/profit.
Quoting merquise
{quote} Since you edited the post let me answer it like this. You can not make a random price chart using random number generator and use that as a basis for your theory. Yoo are committing a number of logical fallacies..one of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi You are comparing a randomly generated chart with real life chart which has different inputs...you can't do that
We probably have a different view of what constitutes randomness. All classical systems are not truly random. Only quantum systems exhibit true randomness due to the uncerainty principle. Classical systems such as markets, the weather, thermodynamic systems etc are termed random due to the inability without perfect knowledge to exactly predict the outcome of a single element of the system such as a trade or a individual molecules movement in a cloud. These classical systems exhibit newtonian behaviour and hence with perfect knowledge of the physics surrounding the entire system and it's constituents, you can in principle perfectly precict the outcome of a single sample of the system....however in reality the intractability of the problem prevents such perfect prediction. Without perfect knowledge however (which I think we can probably both agree is faced by the retail trader), you can only work with probabilities provided you understand the gross features of the entire system. We use thermodynamic principles for example to determine the gross features of the entire system and then use probability to determine a particular outcome.

The crux of my post above is to suggest that exact prediction is a fruitless enterprise for the retail trader. The best bet is to use probability and gross features of price action as perhaps the best guide in attempting to predict where price could go in the future.
Quoting Copernicus
{quote} We probably have a different view of what constitutes randomness. All classical systems are not truly random. Only quantum systems exhibit true randomness due to the uncerainty principle. Classical systems such as markets, the weather, thermodynamic systems etc are termed random due to the inability without perfect knowledge to exactly predict the outcome of a single element of the system such as a trade or a individual molecules movement in a cloud. These classical systems exhibit newtonian behaviour and hence with perfect knowledge of...
I don't know what are you trying to prove by using a Straw man fallacy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man ?

Yes exactly what you said is true in thermodynamics and in physics in general, I remember that lesson in my physics class about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle , and again I ask you who said here that a trader can predict market movement. We are not in a prediction business here, hence we would be called psychics.

We trade based on past data using statistical analysis commonly known as technical analysis and accompanied by fundamental analysis and of course with a little of sentiment analysis. Can we now stop diluting this thread with quantum models and thermodynamics and general theory of relativity.
Quoting merquise
{quote} I don't know what are you trying to prove by using a Straw man fallacy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man ? Yes exactly what you said is true in thermodynamics and in physics in general, I remember that lesson in my physics class about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle , and again I ask you who said here that a trader can predict market movement. We are not in a prediction business here, hence we would be called psychics. We trade based on past data using...
I had to laugh when you said "We trade based on past data using statistical analysis commonly known as technical analysis". Can you show me statistical methods that demonstrate that the majority of techniques used in technical analysis have statistical validity over extended sample sets. Here is a good study that has at least attempted to validate many of the the technical analysis methods....and I can tell you that it ends in tears.

If you dismiss the physics of complex systems as 'diluting this thread' then I am more than happy to leave this discussion but perhaps the behaviour of complex systems and the use of statistical tools that can attempt to measure that collective behaviour might not be totally irrelevant to trading sustainably for the long term.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

Im out too
Quoting plukin
{quote} Background doesn't matter, what matters is the individual's approach and finding out what works for him, finding his edge.
I agree
Quoting Copernicus
In my opinion you cannot visually discminimate on a chart what is random movement versus long term drift, so don't bother with technical analysis tools.
Each to their own but for me price is moved by the central banks and we can see the set-ups occur over past data so I do believe there is a benefit to technical analysis and that is why traders edge and money management / position size is the crux to most traders.
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