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The Big secret to trading success

  • #241
  • Apr 30, 2016 8:52am Apr 30, 2016 8:52am
Quoting cat
{quote} This is the biggest fallacy that people peddle on this forum, and you will inevitably find that this point of view comes from the losers who seek to find a cause. The game is not ' rigged ', neither is your broker out to get you. People lose money due to their own incompetence, and that is the one and only bottom line. I can't tell you how I pissed off I get when I see people in all their self-appointed wisdom trying to divert the reasons for their own failures onto this ' the game is rigged ' crutch. Believe me, this is bullshit, Learn...
Well said. The big players never think about retail traders, and brokers are completely insignificant, too. Retail traders and brokers do not form candles or create patterns on charts. Both observe "the game" as its being played, and definitely not game players.
  • #242
  • Apr 30, 2016 8:57am Apr 30, 2016 8:57am
Quoting cat
{quote} I couldn't agree more with this, and it's another misguided fallacy here on ff, that it's somehow part of the learning curve to blow accounts. It's not - blowing accounts will destroy your morale, terminate your trading career through lack of funds, and make it very difficult if not impossible to get back on track. Provided you keep your risk low, ie, 0.5 to 2% of your account size depending on your proficiency, you should never have to blow an account. Accounts are blown by traders who risk too much per trade, have no money management rules...
Wow, you've addressed two things in a row that annoy me about FF. I've never blown an account, but on FF, blowing accounts seems to be a badge of honor. Can't understand that one at all. There are no professional traders who are proud of blowing an account.
  • #243
  • Apr 30, 2016 9:08am Apr 30, 2016 9:08am
Hi all,

Long time since I've been on. Interesting thread.

IMHO, the secret is just yourself. Discipline and patience with a decent trading strategy. Plus keep it as simple as you can.

A friend of mine who is a really successful trader (gaining anything from $100k to $500k per trade over quite a long time) gave me some great advice a while back - "the crucial thing is to get your levels right". He's talking about good old support and resistance. If you know S/R and know some key candle patterns (continuation and reversal) and trade in the direction of the trend, you're on the way.

I just took a quick look at a chart of GBP/AUD which is where I've been trading recently and drew on some markers.

First pic - daily chart, 100 SMA to get the direction, chucked on a couple of areas to the left showing levels I was interested in.(By the way, I've drawn lines rather than areas to make things a bit clearer on the charts, but I work on areas).

Second and third pic is a 4hr chart of the area between the vertical lines - clearly a down trend.

Just taking some of the levels I look for, I can see lots of trades. If I look for candle patterns (single candles, double etc), I can see even more. An even more again when I look for 50% retracements. All these are everywhere on multiple charts. Actually these charts look more confusing than I wanted because of all the lines - I normally have just a very few lines on the chart when trading.

Keeping it simple - trend, S/R lines, candle patterns. Open up any daily chart (CAD is always more of a pain!) to get a direction, then a 4hr chart, get drawing some horizontal areas on there and see how things line up. You'll see heaps of them. If the market is ranging, get those important levels in and trade off those.

So I don't think there is a secret - it's the same old stuff you hear all the time. But when you read around some really successful traders, they all say the same thing over and over - risk mgt, decent strategy, keeping it simple, S/R, patterns, discipline, patience.

I haven't posted for ages on my own thread as I've been a bit busy tweaking how I trade, learning and trading.

Please no comments about cherry picking charts etc - I had that before in my own thread, so I traded live and posted charts as I did it and made quite a bit in 3 or so days - just to show it can be done. All I'm doing is trying to show that it doesn't need to be complicated. (It's also partly why I don't post too much any more - haven't logged in for months and months).

Anyway, hope that helps someone - I'm not expert and don't pretend to be, but things are going well. I just see charts very simply with nothing on them so I can see key areas.

Cheers
Pharley
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  • #244
  • Apr 30, 2016 9:23am Apr 30, 2016 9:23am
Quoting cat
{quote} Me too...make that 98%.
Me too so that's down to 97% ?
every Saint has a past. Every Sinner has a Future
  • #245
  • Apr 30, 2016 9:39am Apr 30, 2016 9:39am
Quoting cat
{quote} This is the biggest fallacy that people peddle on this forum, and you will inevitably find that this point of view comes from the losers who seek to find a cause. The game is not ' rigged ', neither is your broker out to get you. People lose money due to their own incompetence, and that is the one and only bottom line. I can't tell you how I pissed off I get when I see people in all their self-appointed wisdom trying to divert the reasons for their own failures onto this ' the game is rigged ' crutch. Believe me, this is bullshit, Learn...
Amen to that.
Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack
  • #246
  • Apr 30, 2016 12:12pm Apr 30, 2016 12:12pm
Do what you like to do best and strive to be better at what you do.

It doesn't matter in the slightest what other people are doing or what they have achieved, we all have to walk our own path in this life. Our success is not a measurement to be compared with others but rather the satisfaction within ourselves that we did all we were capable of doing. Quotes from books are two for a penny, conspiracy theories abound, tales of others fictional and factual are still tales, statistics can be bent to the will of the user. We can only draw upon personal experience and learn from that and if we don't learn we fail.
  • #247
  • Apr 30, 2016 12:22pm Apr 30, 2016 12:22pm
One other reason most traders fail is they do not have the tools they need to trade. After 8 years of researching the markets I feel that I now understand the rules that dictate price movements, far from being random the markets can be evaluated if you know how to do it. No one out there can make money trading because virtually none of the information out there actually work. People learn a method it does not work, they then teach it to others and repeat the process.

No one has the time to actually research market movements, Gann did it and it took 10 years, I took 8 to get it. Sadly most of the traders on this forum, have not even spent $50 on actually learning what to do. I think I spent close to $20,000 on courses and material on trading, not including software. Most of it is useless junk, there are a couple of gems but you have to spend a long time reading testing and evaluating.

Most people make no effort
  • #248
  • Apr 30, 2016 1:06pm Apr 30, 2016 1:06pm
Quoting GEfx
There are no professional traders who are proud of blowing an account.
Yeah...Don't know about that dude.

I blow up at least one account per week - mostly demo and will blow up 3-5 accounts this year of live cash.

These accounts are meant to be gamble accounts and by years end, I will still have made a profit of 3-5x my over all losses.

My manual trade accounts...pshhhhhh, I've even blown a couple of these up over my course of trading but now, way ahead of the game.

For me, learning curve and it's not that I wear my losses like a badge of honor, but I am not ashamed of them either.

All perspective, IMO.
Money Can't Buy Happiness. Poverty Can't Buy SHIT! You Choose!
  • #249
  • Apr 30, 2016 4:44pm Apr 30, 2016 4:44pm
I'll column the action I was talking about this advancing weekend if I'll accept the time to hopefully put something appropriate together. It will not be a abounding trading strategy, but it should advice accumulate traders on the appropriate ancillary of the bazaar by alone demography trades with the capital drive of the market, on any time frame. Yes, adverse trend trades can be profitable, but they are abundant added difficult and so I will not be apperception on them on this thread.
  • #250
  • Apr 30, 2016 5:22pm Apr 30, 2016 5:22pm
lol

How to shut a thread down for a few hours...

Wear a red diamond beside your nick and brag about blowing up accounts!!!


Thing is, I do a lot of this shit by way of hobby. Blow up hobby accounts, make some scratch on hobby accounts...all good!

The accounts I blow up start off with a Live USD $3k balance...how's that for flushing money down the tubes?
But in this, I still expect to make $10K-$15K per year.

I don't care what others believe...don't even care what others say...I'm not in this game to compare dick sizes with anybody.
I'm in it for ME!

Not possible, hey?
Well...a lot of folk think that only trading the trend and continuous profit is impossible too. Just this thread alone is testimony to that very thing. But what if you did stay in trend, or could..what if you could work 24hrs per day 5 days per week and continuously trigger with the trend?

Would it pay?

Enter the Hobby Bots!
These are not exactly the shit I run on my live funds but definitely close relatives and some of these even as a sessional run.
All work to trigger in trend and try like fuck to prosper from it.

Can you stay in trend and continue to make money?

The current stats say, yup.
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Money Can't Buy Happiness. Poverty Can't Buy SHIT! You Choose!
  • #251
  • Apr 30, 2016 5:27pm Apr 30, 2016 5:27pm
Only a short period of time, you say?

Sure...but I can't go back in time and write the code and show stats that aren't available.

And, I'm the first one to call BACKTESTS BULLSHIT!

So...let's look at the longest running of the 3 above.

Trading 16 pairs on an M1 chart. This works to identify the trend in 3 separate ways.
Fast, Medium and Slow.
Also trained to Chew off a Limb on trend reversals and has a STOP LOSS that effectively works out to be 30% of the primary investment.

Doesn't make sense by way of conservative trade logic, does it?
No...

But how many still lose their accounts playing by all of the market rules and cliches?

This is just a little testimony for staying with the trend...knowing when to hold, knowing when to fold and knowing when it's time to cash in losses and start again.

Great thread, Cat!
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Money Can't Buy Happiness. Poverty Can't Buy SHIT! You Choose!
  • #252
  • Apr 30, 2016 6:11pm Apr 30, 2016 6:11pm
The most consistent "secret"/unknown trading tactic I found recently is this:

This is the daily chart of SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust), as provided by NorthmanTrader.com. He is the sort of technical trader

who likes to follow long-term patterns and "price structures" on some of the big indexes. The dates marked on this chart

correspond to the options expiration dates (found on the Marketwatch website, among other places).

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(That chart is old, but you can find the updated one at his website, which is elsewhere in this post.)

Put simply, he has found a correlation between options expirations dates and rallies on SPY. There have been a consistent

number of tradable front-run rallies, indicated by the shaded blue boxes on the chart. (On this chart, I included some

comments of Northy's in the shaded box.)



I'm giving this out to people "free" because I found it "free", on Northmantrader's chart, by a complete accident.

(If I had struggled for years to figure it out, I might not be so generous...but he is telling his followers for free

on Twitter and elsewhere, so I will do the same.)
HELL IS EMPTY, ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE. -- Shakespeare
  • #253
  • May 1, 2016 12:04am May 1, 2016 12:04am
Quoting Magix
lol How to shut a thread down for a few hours... Wear a red diamond beside your nick and brag about blowing up accounts!!! Thing is, I do a lot of this shit by way of hobby. Blow up hobby accounts, make some scratch on hobby accounts...all good! The accounts I blow up start off with a Live USD $3k balance...how's that for flushing money down the tubes? But in this, I still expect to make $10K-$15K per year. I don't care what others believe...don't even care what others say...I'm not in this game to compare dick sizes with anybody. I'm in...
I think as hobby trader, it can be fun to see how much you can get out of the market before Mr. Martin gets together with Ms. Margin and shows you the door! Im pretty sure ol dancing phil made his first million this way.

If you think about, it does make a certain amount of sense. If you can feel pretty good about pulling funds before you blow up, I suppose it is one way to trade!
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #254
  • Edited 2:47am May 1, 2016 1:07am | Edited 2:47am
Quoting Magix
first one to call BACKTESTS BULLSHIT! {image}



A forward test shows what happened in the past just as a backtest does. Assuming that you're backtesting using real data, the difference is that those posting forward test results are willing to prove past performance to others.
  • #255
  • May 1, 2016 2:33am May 1, 2016 2:33am
Quoting jmn5611
{quote} Now this is what I will never understand. My entire losses over ten years of learning was about 6k. I have never blown an account. If one cannot make money trading pennies, why would one move on to trading lots? That has never made sense to me.
My guess would be too many don't have the patience to do anything other than try to get rich quick. That and if they have found something that works they might only wait a month or two before going big and it doesn't allow for changes in market circumstance eg change from trend to reversal, large pullback or go from ranging to trend.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
  • #256
  • Edited 3:06am May 1, 2016 2:56am | Edited 3:06am
Quoting dab
{quote} My guess would be too many don't have the patience to do anything other than try to get rich quick. That and if they have found something that works they might only wait a month or two before going big and it doesn't allow for changes in market circumstance eg change from trend to reversal, large pullback or go from ranging to trend.
The dreary sadness of that is that a 10,000 dollar account compounds to a million dollars in less than five years at 10% per month. A traders life would be changed long before that five years however. If that is not quick, then I do not know what is!

Edit, had to change the math from the first post as I was in error.
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #257
  • May 1, 2016 3:03am May 1, 2016 3:03am
Don't be bothered about the future income. Those large hedge funds are aiming at silly 3%/month because they manage millions but that doesn't mean they can't do better than that.
  • #258
  • May 1, 2016 4:05am May 1, 2016 4:05am
Quoting cat
....
"It's not a system which will bring success, it is having a full acquaintance with the market, a know-how that can only come through empiricism and involvement, taking you eventually to a level whereby it's not just the opportunities you see, it's what's going on around them...the S &R levels, the market participation, order flow, volume, etc, because each and every day the market wears a new set of clothes, and things will never be exactly the same as the day before. Learning to adjust to these constant permutations, and tune oneself in to the constant ebb and flow of price movement takes time and can only be achieved by experience."

Well said. The longer I continue, the more I'm coming to the same conclusion: that it's less about a system, and more about having the necessary specialist knowledge, and a LOT of hands-on experience.
  • #259
  • May 1, 2016 5:21am May 1, 2016 5:21am
Quoting HeyYou
{quote} A forward test shows what happened in the past just as a backtest does. Assuming that you're backtesting using real data, the difference is that those posting forward test results are willing to prove past performance to others.
When a trader does backtests usually he/she experiments with different sets of parameters until the best one is found. Or he/she uses the Optimizer to find the best one. Then he/she applies it to a forward test and surprised to seee that the strategy just does not work as it did on historical data... Why...??

The answer is explained by the theory called "THE TEXAS SHARPSHOOTER FALLACY":

"When you desire meaning, when you want things to line up, you forget about stochasticity. You are lulled by the signal. You forget about noise. With meaning, you overlook randomness, but meaning is a human construction.

You have just committed the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy".

The fallacy gets its name from imagining a cowboy shooting at a barn. Over time, the side of the barn becomes riddled with holes. In some places there are lots of them, in others there are few. If the cowboy later paints a bullseye over a spot where his bullet holes clustered together it looks like he is pretty good with a gun.

By painting a bullseye over a bullet hole the cowboy places artificial order over natural random chance."
  • #260
  • May 1, 2016 5:30am May 1, 2016 5:30am
Quoting MasterGuru
{quote} When a trader does backtests usually he/she experiments with different sets of parameters until the best one is found. Or he/she uses the Optimizer to find the best one. Then he/she applies it to a forward test and surprised to seee that the strategy just does not work as it did on historical data... Why...?? The answer is explained by the theory called "THE TEXAS SHARPSHOOTER FALLACY": "When you desire meaning, when you want things to line up, you...



Master, I'm talking about gathering statistical data to see which parameters are the most likely to give me an edge. Backtesting can be done manually or automatically.
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