Quote from bone:
Fading is a sickness.
Quote from the1:
Flat out denying fading as a strategy is....well, simply wrong.
Quote from bone:
Oh, you are entirely correct, and I have even taken on experienced traders as clients who spent their entire careers fighting the market. They made money on one hand, and on the other would readily admit that it really was an exhausting methodology and in hindsight felt that the way they went about using their resourses (time, capital, trading models, energy) were not really optimized. Ultimately, they thought that they could have made more money not fighting the markets.
Quote from the1:
There are times when fading a move works incredibly well and other times when it doesn't.
Quote from NoDoji:
I went through a phase of counter-trend trading and realized over time that the majority of my trades went on an adverse excursion that was on average quite a bit further away than my eventual profit.
When something happens a majority of the time over a period of time that includes varying market conditions (bear and bull), what does that tell you?
That tells you you have a strong statistical edge.
!!!
(That's my symbol for a really big light bulb appearing above my head.)
I had a discussion with a counter-trend trader about the whole fading strategy. Since most of the trades went against him at first and he was bidding or offering at a level that was still a nice price distance away, why not just immediately trade in the direction of the move-in-progress and get the added benefit of a huge profit in the event the bull or the bear is engaged in a feeding frenzy?
A real-time example of this is frequently demonstrated in the ES Journal when emg announces a level at which he plans to go short or long for 1 point of profit and that price is usually 5 or more points away. His hit rate is phenomenal.
Anyone needs to make consistent profits, just take the opposite side of his planned trade at the time he announces it and make his entry your profit target.