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Simulation is a waste of time beyond learning the keystrokes of your platform. All you need when you're ready to start is a real-time price feed with live bids and offers -- and some tuition money. Stop learning how to trade. Instead, just trade.

What does this have to do with "day traders" never winning??

People can make a living from technical analysis and money management? Now that's hard to believe. Is there one person out there that will claim they've made their money not off price action but technical analysis? Is there even one? Price action is price analysis of the present moment...

Imagine if this became "acceptable" in the minds of all those currently on the edge. Whether mortgage debt, credit cards, student loans etc. How much easier it would be to let things go if your friend, relative, neighbor went the same route. When you owe the bank 100k, the bank owns you...

Hang Seng just dropped 300 pts in a couple minutes -- is this typical action?

You are already ahead of the pack in this respect -- that is, you are anticipating the reasons why long-term success in trading is so elusive. Can you already see the problems with backtesting itself as so-called "proof" of an edge? You seem to want to pit a longer-term trading time frame...

Plenty of movement out there if you know where to look, the lack of liquidity just helps in this respect. I'm no big volume trader, but take 1000-1500 share positions. I shoot for points at a time, P/L regularly in mid-4 figures daily.

This sounds very clean cut but I think it's not so simple an issue. Let me come out and say that yes, I am a discretionary trader. However, discretion does not mean I am guessing at every trade nor jumping from one strategy to the next. The best trades I make often have all the same...

Did you ever think that adding to losers was how he made those gains in the first place? Why would someone consistently profitable ever break their rules, unless out of boredom, trying something new, reasons which are fine but are just a matter of resposibility?

That's the conundrum with discretionary trading. To succeed in it long term means always being flexible, always shifting with the market, so you're eternally prone to second-guessing yourself. Psychological scapegoats tend to show up when that which once worked no longer does.

Been there done all that. Still doing it once in a while. It all comes down to how well you take your losers. The wicked irony of taking losses is the larger they become, the more unlikely you want to take them. I used to let relatively moderate losers turn into huge givebacks like...

It's obvious which model attracts you more. Yet the premise/conclusion you draw from your first "random only" model is completely off the mark. There is a missing dimension of the market that this thread totally ignores. A clue: your higher thinkers aka nobel prize winners seem to blow...

This is pretty much where you need to begin. Don't worry about originality, the best and most consistent ways of making money are as old as the markets themselves. Know your market, know your competition, know where your profits are coming from . . .

If you have a trader's mindset to begin with, then I'll assume you are looking for the largest moves within the shortest periods of whatever time frame you trade -- isn't that the ultimate (and most obvious) goal? What do you think causes prices to sometimes move with much greater velocity than...

A simulator is pretty much less than useless (as with anything else in this business, what doesn't help tends to hurt/deceive), and it has nothing to do with "real money" pressures. Of course there are varying degrees depending on market but never take your p/l on a simulator seriously...

This is a very important topic because you will always need to sacrifice when you want to take your trading to the next level. The closest analog I can imagine is increasing table limits when playing poker: you build up a stake starting at the lower limits, then take a shot at the next level...

Great post. And if you are going to play the game -- play it paranoid, play as if it were all true. Assume everyone sees your orders, knows your stops, knows your max pain points, knows exactly when the risk manager at your branch will liquidate all your positions for the day. Because...

Hidden orders can be seen indirectly if they are best bid/lowest offer; there must be an order parameter where one can maintain bbo displayed. How many times have you seen your "hidden" best bid beaten by a penny the instant it is sent, then have this new order disappear once you cancel...

Belief in this statement as a starting point is the real reason why traders fail.

Do you technicians consider anything else besides the charts? You guys are talking technical levels on the eve of an earnings release. This stock can open 20+ pts past any "resistance" level in the pre-market and blow all your stops away at the bell. If you are short this stock for a...