I gave up the "grail" yet he failed.

What a great thread. It goes to show, the grail itself is very simple. But the mentality required to recognize it is the difference between those who are the market and those who are punished by it.

:D
 
(my contribution to this thread is a little late in coming)

You are now trapped.

I think that what is a grail for one person may not be a grail for another.

I find that I must really believe in a system to take the time to manually trade it. But if it were good enough I am convinced I would automate it, that is just me...but back to my thought....If I am going to spend hours glued to a screen then I MUST believe in what I am doing.

Many people enter the trading world just to find out through self-discovery that they are gamblers...that trading is boring if not gambling.

So your family member needs to go through some self-discovery and decide if he wants to trade for himself...the best service you could do for him is to drop the project and refuse to help him. Show him this post.

ES

Quote from TrueRange:

A family member came to me 6 months ago for some advice. He lost some money trading stocks and wanted to know the secret sauce.

I was very reluctant to give advice for a couple reasons. But the primary one being this : trading success for most requires a personal low to be hit before you can begin the process of "re-wiring" your natural born tendencies that allow one to become a long term winner at this game. He had not hit this low. A loss of a few grand was the brunt of the "pain". Of course this made me chuckle.

But since he is a family member and he once did me a favor that was very small in effort but came back to me in spades regarding my own psychology I decided to assist. I gave him a set of rules based on my own experience of 8 years that would guarantee at the very least he would not make a account ending trade(barring an act of god) and best case he makes some money and learns how to evolve his own style and approach.

The rules were simple too follow. Details I wont share, but basically it went like this

- A filter to choose what to trade.
-money management rules to choose how much to trade and what to risk per trade.
- and a general market filter to determine whether to be in the market(long only) or stay in cash.

I then told him I dont want to hear about your progress at all for one year. Stick to the rules then report back to me. And if you have done exactly what I told you, regardless of actual PnL I will assist you further and help you step it up.

So, fast forward 6 months I get a call. "I followed your rules, they were working great! I was making money. Then I stepped outside your rules and lost half my money. Can you help me make it back?"

So, I am considering helping him one more time for the sake of second chances.

What would you all do?
More...
 
Quote from vk60546:

Let me ask you something. Does technical analysis work or does it not?

I'm confused by what I'm reading so far. I've got Dr. Alexander Elder's Trading for a Living and in the book he says, on the one hand, that you can't figure out the market since the market is human psychology and psychiatry. On the other hand, he is providing patterns that semi-predict what the next move may be.

So... this drives me to ask a question, does technical analysis work?

Also, if you don't mind me asking, did your relative had to purchase any software or any system to implement your plan?

Thanks.
More...
%%%%%

Vk60;
Put it simple, its about probabilities, not predictions.

Highest probabilities is that it did not require buying a system:cool: This is not a a prediction.

Agree with Dr.Elder, the market changes too much to figure out/predict.

But i recently did some research where;
a] most of the trends are down past 200/ +days.
b]most of the trends are down past 50+/ days.
c]some smaller trends are up, but strangely, these simply increase the cost of doing business.And so they are[mostly, but not all]reinforcing the downTrend/bearTrend...............................................

So its not a prediction, but speaking of tek analysis;
any wonder why buyers are few & far between?????,:D
 
Quote from ElectricSavant:

(my contribution to this thread is a little late in coming)

You are now trapped.

I think that what is a grail for one person may not be a grail for another.

I find that I must really believe in a system to take the time to manually trade it. But if it were good enough I am convinced I would automate it, that is just me...but back to my thought....If I am going to spend hours glued to a screen then I MUST believe in what I am doing.

Many people enter the trading world just to find out through self-discovery that they are gamblers...that trading is boring if not gambling.

So your family member needs to go through some self-discovery and decide if he wants to trade for himself...the best service you could do for him is to drop the project and refuse to help him. Show him this post.

ES
More...


I agree. Excellent post, ES.
 
Aside from the mental aspect, and discipline, and money management and position management and all those important aspects people discuss all the time, I find the holy grail to be quite simply....

Using support and resistance, just when you think a strong trend is about to change, bet that it won't.

There's a lot depth in that statement and imo is the key to it all.
 
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