Just quoting you to remind myself to show this post to my friends.
Hilarious shit this board.
Nice plan buddy!
If you could go back in time to when you were a new trader
- Thread starter TheGreatGorilla
- Start date
Just quoting you to remind myself to show this post to my friends.
Hilarious shit this board.
Nice plan buddy!
A lot of it has to do with age. Traders under 35 or so see the trading world -- and the world in general -- much differently from older traders. Discount brokers whose commissions are practically free, computers, real-time streaming quotes for next to free, charting software, instant executions, indicators (hundreds of indicators), candlesticks and dozens of other forms of displaying price data, backtests done by the computer with a mouseclick are the default for anyone who learned to trade during the last 15-20 years. If they know anything about market or trading history, it's just something they read and need not have anything to do with their reality. Pioneers like Schabacker and Magee are dismissed because they don't provide the latest RSI setting. One reads the same pontifications over and over again because they read the same books, took the same courses, used the same software, followed the same gurus, watched the same videos. With some exceptions, they have neither the knowledge nor the experience to come up with anything original yet they dismiss anything that happened before 1994 as hopelessly out of date.
Older traders, on the other hand, remember full-commission brokers, placing orders by phone or even by mail, waiting for Trendline for charts (unless they drew them themselves from quotes obtained from the newspaper), manual backtests, and are more likely to be familiar with the work of pioneers such as Dow, Wyckoff, Schabacker, deVilliers, Elliott, Magee, to name a few. They understand that the law of supply and demand is not a theory and applies today just as much as it applied in 1637, or, for that matter, 3000BC. And while some of them wear tinfoil hats and receive trading signals from Mars, they generally have a very different view of markets and trading than younger traders. One can debate which group is more knowledgeable, more experienced, more capable. But I've seen no evidence that younger traders have benefited much from all the gee-whiz. They continue to explode just as much and just as often as the inexperienced and ill-prepared always have, and are just as angry and hostile about it.
In a few decades, of course, the older traders who have first-hand knowledge of this stuff will be gone. But the books will still be here in some form. And the conclusions reached by those who take the time to do the study and the research and the testing (manual) will be the same as those reached by the Sumerians. And since the fundamental nature of markets is immutable, those who are able to remove their egos from the equation and address the market on its own terms will be most likely to succeed.
As for the original question and keeping it purely trading related.....
If I could go back in time....
I wish I had more patience when younger, and when everything was lined up I swung harder.
However, my conservative nature probably had its own advantages.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
If I could go back in time....
I wish I had more patience when younger, and when everything was lined up I swung harder.
However, my conservative nature probably had its own advantages.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
Why would you say ""all methods" fail in the long run? Then you go on to say "traders figure out how to catch directional rides in that endless cycle enjoy steady progress>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"
What many are saying in this thread is to allow yourself to follow the bouncing ball of price. That is the same as what we do with children in first grade, they are taught the alphabet as the first step to greater learning and understanding of life itself. What is the difference between observing the bouncing ball of price and water?
This thread suggests if you just drink water (observe price) you will be happy and need nothing else. Drinking the Kool-Aid of simply observing price will not produce profits. A child learning their ABC's will not get them to the next grade alone.
This thread is worse that even marketsurfer came up with as he drooled down his shirt contending TA was useless. But lets be honest here, at least surf recognized TA exists.
Price alone is your alphabet, what follows is your take on how to use that information in a well constructed method. Profits do not jump out and kiss you because you learned your ABC's, they come in a consistent manner when you have taken the info and installed a way to USE that info to YOUR advantage.
Anyone that teaches you the alphabet and then leaves you hanging out to dry is failing to help anyone.
Watching price "make lines" on a chart is not a method, not a plan.
I am finished with this thread, carry on folks, it was fun reading and bitching about having NO REAL VALUE.........
PS: Well, maybe a couple posters are going to comingle and write a book, thus THEY see value in saying TA is no good as long as they allow us to teach YOU the alphabet.....
well, it would be more funny if it wasn't that true
I don't place that much stock in guessing what it is going to do
but if you are my boss, and you give me some money, and tell me, "Only trade from the short side" I can make you some money
maybe not as much as if I was long, but I can make you profitable
so, I put a lot more stock in the skill of trading than I do in guessing
but I will be the first to admit, the big money is made when you guess right
This is EXACTLY what I did.
Lots of immaturity here at ET, and tons of ego as well - probably not the best combination for anyone wishing to succeed at trading I would bet. Well, I'm much closer to 50 than I am to 35, and though I've only been foozling with the trading world on a semi "active" basis for about a decade, I did do some time as a stockbroker in the mid- 90's, and I can tell you this: I have more access to charts, pricing info, market depth, and market makers on my own home computer in the comfort of my own home office than I had been given at my desk as a full service, duly licensed broker at an NYSE firm circa '95-'98. And even using Scottrade, I am paying far less in commissions than I was charged back then as an employee of the firm!
When I decided that I ought to really stop treating this like a game, "playing" in the market as a sort of entertaining diversion not unlike a kid playing at his favorite video game (though many of these kids take their gaming far more seriously than I had ever taken my trading), the first place I went (after reading your thread here) was back to my dad's old copy of William O'Neils book from the 80's. From there, I've taken my reading suggestions largely from what you and nodoji have recommended - Wyckoff, Schabaker, Magee, Douglas, and about 3 pages or so of that Al Brooks book (sorry nodoji, the first 3 pages were written fairly well. After that, I found no signs of intelligible language
) I did my first day of virtual trading this morning. I'm calling it "Virtual Orientation," as it was my first attempt to daytrade using Scottrade's actual trading platform. I did have a few order entry flubs which caused me to miss my preferred entries and have to wait for my secondary entries, but overall I'm very pleased with my results. I will continue my "orientation" tomorrow. I will be in client meetings the last three days of this week. Next week, and thereafter, I have been doing my best to arrange my business schedule to accommodate my day trading from 9:30 to 11 AM EST.
I plan on a few weeks of sim trading before going live. I have decided to trading in stocks. I did initially do some time observing the NQ as you trade and CL as nodoji trades, but what little "success" I did manage to have in the past was with stocks, so I decided to stick with those, at least for now. I will start a journal to track my progress starting next week.
Back then the discount brokers created quite a stir, though what were discounts then seem horrendous now. Given the lower prices, traders thought they could make many more trades and yet still come out ahead on commissions, which, technically, was true. But the result of course was an extraordinary degree of overtrading. Those who survived got past that. Those who didn't get past it are long gone.
Though you're right about the software. For all its unintended and negative consequences, being able to switch from one interval to another with a click is something I would not want to give up.
I'm glad my threads were useful. Good luck with your trading and your journal.
