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So what will you be posting about it? Sounds interesting to me.

You are right of course. Something else for the to do list.

Yes I have found this too. I have tested a few systems using pullbacks compared to just jumping into a rising trend, and have never found the pullback option to be better. This goes against prevailing wisdom I know. It seems possible that the advantage of buying a bit lower on a pullback may...

…it’s 2.15 UK time and you go to set your automated trading program to run on the Dow Jones opening at 2.30, and realise that British Summer Time has just ended, so you are an hour late, and have missed a nice easy 120pt move down that your system would have taken…

There is also a slight difference in say putting money on card counting at blackjack or playing poker, compared to trading the markets. That is because with the former there is a limited problem space, and you can work out the odds of winning or losing exactly if you had enough computation...

It sounds like one of those irregular verbs; I invest, you trade, he just gambles. In a sense buying or selling shares, indices, currencies or commodities or whatever else is always gambling, as they may go up or down in price. Most 'investors' would not want to call it this though, as...

Well in theory you just need a system with a positive expectancy, and keep trading it, scaling up as your account increases in size. The point of the thread was that it is far from easy to get positive expectancy (an edge), certainly in day trading from my experience, and I suspect in swing...

Thanks for this; nice to see a positive post about the possibilities of trading. In most fields it is usually accepted wisdom that things were always easier in some long gone golden age. I'm not sure I believe it though. I think it has always been quite hard to make money/buy a house/become a...

No an average of a 1 percent gain with a 2 percent maximum risk of capital.

One percent profit per trade so: 1.01 raised to 700th power=1059.16 * 1000 (original stake) = 1,059,160

Semi-serious question. Assuming you are a day trader risking say 2% of capital on a trade, with perhaps an expected win on average of half that on each trade (quite conservative by some standards I have read about here), if you started today with a modest £1000 and could place just one trade a...

Thanks again for all the interesting responses on this thread. There is some justification in asking what I mean by asking whether markets change. The problem is that in some ways that is what I am trying to find out, because it is a common lament from traders that their approach had an edge...

Yes you are right userque, though I covered it to some extent in the original post "clearly the market is sometimes going up, sometimes going down, and sometimes going sideways; is sometimes volatile and sometimes not; but is there more to it than that?" The responses have been informative...

Thanks for all the responses on this thread; I had to do the day job today, so only just got back to this in the last hour or so. It’s a shame tradex has ducked out, as in general his comments matched my confirmation bias, although with some caveats. I can see that some market edges might...

It seems a common theme with traders that they find an edge in the market which works for a while, but then the market 'changes' and the edge disappears and starts losing money. This seems odd to me; clearly the market is sometimes going up, sometimes going down, and sometimes going sideways...

Thanks for all the comments; they have been very helpful. For the record, I only use stop orders at the moment, not stop limit orders, but I can see that there are dangers to that approach. I guess it is just another risk to be factored in. I have already seen some hefty slippage when the...

Thanks for this. I do have all of those in place (apart from knowing what I am doing, which is very much a work in progress), so you are probably right. In real life I only insure against disaster, not against manageable loss, so that would probably be the best approach here.

Thanks; yes I get this. Maybe my concern should be more with a very sudden market move (say a few thousand points on the Dow) rather than a flash crash.

Yes insurance can be expensive. I do spread bet on the Dow so could use guaranteed stops, but as you say, it is probably expensive and self-insurance may be a better option.

Thanks very much for sharing this, and bad luck for the 6k loss - that is just the sort of situation I was trying to prepare for. I shall look at all of those options. I suspect that many unseasoned traders would be unaware that even with careful money management and stops, it is still...