Consistently profitable traders...

[tomdavis]

Backtesting is what got me over the hump. I found strategies 18 years ago that still work just as well today (adjusted for volume and volatility).

I continue to test to verify everything I do. I can't know the outcome of any particular trade before I take it, but I can know the performance of my next hundred trades.

Seventy percent of what I learned, I learned from backtesting. No optimizing. All stats. Pure math. I won't trade any methodology that doesn't have numbers to back it up.

Quote from nakachalet:

I beg to differ.

There is no quantity of massive amounts of backtesting, regardless of how many decades of backtesting conducted that could be equated to one live on line short or long order placement.

Been there done that.

Furthermore, regardless of how many years of backtesting you researched and conducted, it could never provide you guarantee that when you place your next real time order, the same evnironments and circumstances occurred back then, would remain the same. Anything and everything not anticipated would happen as you place your first real money order.

Hence comes the disclaimer that every brokerage house puts forth in bold type.... that past performance, even in real time and real market, is no guarantee....

That does not mean to say that one oughts not do some backtesting at all either. There are aplenty of trading platforms and systems out there advertised for sale, all claiming substantial proof based on backtesting that the system would yield 70%, 80% profitability. Would any avid traders like to own any of them? Probably NOT, Never.

If anyone aspires to be remotely successful in trading, rollups your sleeves and starts digging into mountainous amount of trading info on the net, focusing on only one single product and one trading approach that you dutifully selected. Apply what you know and what you learn from other traders on what you selected for twenty sessions or a calendar month.... and see if you could achieve a 55% profitability level. For a newbie a 55% win result within 20 trading days could equate to scoring 150 on a nonverbal IQ test.

To become a sustained successful trader is like a race car driver, you got to do the laps, thousand upon thousand of laps.... similar to training yourself day in and day out, month after month, staying in focus in front of your trading screen.... even then.... at the end of six months, your sim acct might still be in the red.... LOL

However, if you have the time and patient, do not give it up yet.... seek out some traders who have been doing it for a few years, to assist your learning to trade for profitability....; is my humble opinion.

Good luck, good fortune and good trading, everyone.

Respectfully submitted

 

[bighog]

Quote from austinp:



Everything anyone ever needed to know about successful retail trading operations is stated right there above.

Spoken from the mouth of a wannabe vendor. There is no such animal as a retail trading operation. Every person that puts on a trade is doing what the futures mkt expects from all of the participants, to partake in accepting the risk that the "others" are wanting to lay off to someone else.

Win or lose, we are all speculators in the future price of "something" putting labels on the industry users is silly, simply silly...............we transfer money around, where and from whom it comes from is MOX-NIX. When i go to a KROGER and buy some groceries i am not asked if i got the money from another speculator or a bonified commercial hedging his/her business risks to maintain a profitable business. It all comes in and goes out without signatures from the lender.

 

[daveb351]

I've been trading profitably for a for over 12yrs. At the beginning, was very lucky to have found a group that to be a member you had to prove consistency. Their mantra, one stock can make a living.

Today I trade only GOOG(traded POT before the 3:1 slit). This last week it had swings of 10.56, 6.11, 5.52, 7.77, 7.12, 5.82, 5.49. Using weekly options and only buying ATM(when you get good try synthetic L/S's and your ROI will skyrocket), assume you can capture 50% of each swing and with your ATM option you'd net 50% of that. So 49pts X.50 X.50 = $12.25X100= $1225 per contract, and GOOG ATM contracts average $500 over the week.

And, every turning point was a CCI divergence...it doesn't get easier than that

 

[bmwhendrix]

Just out of curiosity...how many CCI divergences were not turning points?

 

[nakachalet]

Quote from intradaybill:

Trading is not an exercise in emotive balances. Trading is math.

Only math can provide confidence and restraint. Qualitative assesments lead to ruin regardless of any emotive balance.

Trading offers no room for a substitute to math. Those that think the solution lies on emotive balance do so because they lack the math skills.

This is not a challenge nor a rebuttal to your excellent description above.

However for any potential trader, your excellent advice becomes a confusing factor in terms of descriptive generalities.

Perhaps, it would at least help me to understand and grasp the core of trading for a living better, if you would at the same time delineate just what you intend to mean in terms of emotive balance....

Just what do you intend to mean.... qualitative assessments lead to ruin....

Do you intend to say to other traders that crunching numbers, such as backtesting and such.... are much preferred over microscopic analyses of your daily trading outcomes....?

And do you intend to mean that those long time established traders who can not or would not do quantitative analyses, are lacking of math skills? Would the traders' math proficiency level at Stats 101 be considered as suffice to trade? Or should they go on to complete Stats 810 at the doctoral level in order to trade successfully?

To help readers, followers and other traders such as myself who is not too bright nor savy yet, to understand further, we would surely appreciate a little more specificities here and there.... which would be very much appreciated. Thanks much for your narrative opener which makes good sense in different areas.

 

[oilfxpro]

Quote from bighog:

Spoken from the mouth of a wannabe vendor. There is no such animal as a retail trading operation. Every person that puts on a trade is doing what the futures mkt expects from all of the participants, to partake in accepting the risk that the "others" are wanting to lay off to someone else.

Win or lose, we are all speculators in the future price of "something" putting labels on the industry users is silly, simply silly...............we transfer money around, where and from whom it comes from is MOX-NIX. When i go to a KROGER and buy some groceries i am not asked if i got the money from another speculator or a bonified commercial hedging his/her business risks to maintain a profitable business. It all comes in and goes out without signatures from the lender.

Why does every one give the game away?If you do enough reading on E T , one discovers the snake oil team which encouraged us to give it all to the market.

 

[oilfxpro]

Quote from DEM BONES:

How were you able to create a healthy balance in confidence and restraint?How did you develop a mechanism to avoid being overconfident and taking on excessive risk?

Write a trading plan and follow it , go on sim with trading plan until it works consistently for 3 months

 

[austinp]

Quote from bighog:

Spoken from the mouth of a wannabe vendor. There is no such animal as a retail trading operation. Every person that puts on a trade is doing what the futures mkt expects from all of the participants, to partake in accepting the risk that the "others" are wanting to lay off to someone else.

Win or lose, we are all speculators in the future price of "something" putting labels on the industry users is silly, simply silly...............we transfer money around, where and from whom it comes from is MOX-NIX.

Oh really? So the at-home trader working from his/her wi-fi laptop and single charts is on equal ground to the prop-trader with $5 mil buying power and faster locate who is equal to the hedge fund desk trader with $50 mil buying power and faster locate still?

We ain't all the same anything as traders... that babble could not be further from the truth. Like saying small college football players are the same league as major college who are equal to arena league who are equal to the NFL.

Hey, they all toss a football around, right? Must be equal opportunity and potential for profit amonst them all.

Anyone at home who fancies himself on perfectly equal ground to the insider pros with 1,000x the buying power and 100x speed of execution would be a big-ego donator to the markets.

 

[austinp]

Quote from oilfxpro:

Why does every one give the game away?If you do enough reading on E T , one discovers the snake oil team which encouraged us to give it all to the market.

no one alive ever encouraged anyone else to give their money to the markets. only inside ET and nowhere else on the web do struggling traders argue with and refute successful traders.

you eschewed Dustin's advice and comments in dismissive fashion when the truth is that for years he's enjoyed the trading success you would die for... as would all the other bigpretenders in this board.

Spout off less, listen more and further yourself towards where you want to be. Or rant away in a public flog where blind & deaf routinely lead the blinder and deafer.

that's your choice... so choose wisely

 

[startraitor]

If you read some bird cage liner I got in the mail this weekend we all should be making 7 figures within a year trading cl, but that has nothing to do with luring in stary eyed noobs to a vendor. BTW, I do not subscribe, they send me that trash.

Quote from austinp:

no one alive ever encouraged anyone else to give their money to the markets. only inside ET and nowhere else on the web do struggling traders argue with and refute successful traders.

you eschewed Dustin's advice and comments in dismissive fashion when the truth for years is he's enjoyed the trading success you would die for... as would all the other bigpretenders in this board.

spout less, listen more and further yourself where you want to be. or rant away in a public flog where blind & deaf routinely lead the blinder and deafer.

that's your choice... so choose wisely