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I'd like to see the p&l for Tim Knight, now or formerly of Investools . . . When he said one day that his account was up 18% THAT MORNING . . . I began to have my doubts. There's a really simple solution here: no selling systems unless you can demonstrate results on something like Covestor...

I don't get how fib is useful . . . .any stock is going to retrace between 38, 50, and 61 . . . if it retraces 54%, which one is that? Good enough for trading stocks?

I trade small cap stocks . . . My time frame is determined by the stop. I suppose I would have a time stop if the stock went nowhere, but haven't had that problem yet. I prefer the least volatile stocks because they are less likely to hit the stop, obviously. My last two (successful) trades were...

Because your making the fallacy of the predetermined gain. You assume "Ok this stock is going to $100, I should lower my cost basis to maximize my profits." But there is no predetermined gain. You're looking back from the future. A better way to approach it is, "These are 10 stocks about to...

I usually have a trailing stop that is 2.5 the ATR.

Scaling is like cutting a pie into 100 slices and declaring that you won't gain weight if you only eat small slices. Doesn't work that way. It's the same pie, not matter how you slice it.

If you scale in 5 times into one stock, imagine that you have five positions instead of one. If sell each position, are you selling out of five positions or scaling out of one? If your total account has adequate diversification, it doesn't matter. Think about it.

No, it's about profitable exit. With the right money management and selling strategy, any entry is adequate.

I don't know about arbitrary assumptions, that's just common sense. Scaling is a way to make yourself feel better, but over the long term it cancels itself out.

Pyramiding is simply the inverse of doubling down. Doubling down doesn't work for the same reason pyramiding does, because trends tend to continue.

As for the criticism of pyramiding -- that's why it works, because it's counterintuitive. If it were intuitive, everybody would be doing it, and it wouldn't work.

Scaling out makes your broker richer. Let's say you trade 500 times/year on 100 positions. You scale in and out 5x per position. Over 100 positions, what does all of that scaling accomplish? Over your total portfolio, the scaling will simply cancel itself out.

Over thousands of trades, it doesn't matter what happens in one trade, so trying to maximize your win rate is irrelevant. The same for scaling in and out -- that's about maximizing win rate, which doesn't matter. Scaling out of a position between 30 and 40 is the same as selling at 35, even if...

So does this mean, the more hands you lose, the more money you make? I should be filthy rich by now, if that's the case . . .

1. First, you can dump a scan straight into a chart setup, no cutting and pasting. If you want to cut and paste, you can do it with hundreds of stocks at a time, not one at a time (this should be standard on charting packages but isnt) 2. Charts can all be seen on one page, no scrolling...

I agree. When I hear technical analysts talking about head and shoulders, I think to myself, how do you trade a head and shoulders? The neck line is right in the middle of huge traffic . . . why bother?

There are the old technical analysis chestnuts . . . head and shoulders and double bottoms and cup and handles . . . but what formations actually work today? The most profitable formation in my opinion is the bull flag. Remember that you don't have to trade every stock.

Ultimately the commodity is going to be sold and bot by an economic buyer . . . so the ultimate buyer and seller is economic. The speculators are just lending liquidity to the market. I see your point that the speculators could extract value if the economic buyers and sellers lose money on...

"Then, a trader should be able to enter and capture that risk premium. " Doesn't all of the economic value accrue to the airline (and it's customers)? I don't see the speculators capturing any of the value.

My original premise was, what markets offer the best opportunity to make money? For instance, traders say futures trading is very difficult . . . I'm sure they're right. But isn't that because every futures transaction has a winner and a loser? And if the purpose of your trading is to make...