If you enter a high-probability trade and then the charts movement goes to 50/50, what do you do?

[Mtrader]

Sure, you are talking about hindsight--- hindsight has nothing to do with the probability of a trade being profitable. Im talking about entries, not looking at past results.

The trades were executed and after the exit the results were real and confirmed by the statements. Has nothing to do with hindsight. Realtime trading with realtime results.

Your explanation is very weak and irrelevant. More like most people do: copy statements found on internet without even any sceptical reflexion.
It is a zero sum game is another famous statement from internet. Zero sum game or not has no importance for an individual trader. For the trader who did 1000 trades it was not a zero sum game. It was a very profitable game.
Even in markets that are not zero sum games there are winners and losers.

 

[tlatoani]

The trades were executed and after the exit the results were real and confirmed by the statements. Has nothing to do with hindsight. Realtime trading with realtime results.

Your explanation is very weak and irrelevant. More like most people do: copy statements found on internet without even any critical reflexion.
It is a zero sum game is another famous statement from internet. Zero sum game or not has no importance for an individual trader. For the trader who did 1000 trades it was not a zero sum game. It was a very profitable game.
Even in markets that are not zero sum games there are winners and losers.

Man, i tried really hard to explain in simple terms-- im sorry, but you truly are lost.

 

[Deuteronomy_24_7]

I'm not sure I understand the OP... he entered without any exit plan, so now he's confused?

 

[cjbuckley4]

Obviously, this is all premised very strongly on whether your system has any merit.
But let's assume it does.

You enter a trade, and then it moves (profitably or unprofitably) to a state where you are uncertain of the direction. Now it's a matter of exiting. If you weren't in a position, you'd neither buy nor sell here. So what should you do at the point where it's a coinflip for money? Something seems paradoxical in my thinking here...

A truly repeatable and thus (somewhat) testable system has defined entry and exit conditions. If you reach a point where you or your system doesn't know what to do, is it a system?

But that's the sort of advice that contributes to elite trader sounding more like a coach castigating his players than a community looking to hone a similar interest, so let me expand.

Part of the problem you'll run into trying to create a truly algorithmic system trading on bars as I imagine you would be given this sort of question is that bars change. If you were modeling, say, the bid and ask price processes using continuous data then each arrival time of a new quote or trade (poisson point process) could be considered an observation of a random variable. However, a bar has zero-several arrivals within a discretized timeframe, so if your system says something like: do X when price reaches Y, you're telling your system to perform an action based on an event that is actually unknowable at this time.

To illustrate this logic a bit less tersely: we're in the middle of a bar. Who's to say what the high, low, close, volume, etc. of this bar will be? All that's observable is the open. Therefore if your system is based on trading charts or bars as it where and you entered based on some condition met during that bar that no longer was met when the bar has closed, you may find yourself wondering what to do.

The solution? If you want to trade based on bars, only consider what's observable at any given time...the open of the current bar, data from past bars. If you want to trade based on conditions such as "as soon as the ask touches X" you'll likely want tick data.

 

[wartrace]

Obviously, this is all premised very strongly on whether your system has any merit.
But let's assume it does.

You enter a trade, and then it moves (profitably or unprofitably) to a state where you are uncertain of the direction. Now it's a matter of exiting. If you weren't in a position, you'd neither buy nor sell here. So what should you do at the point where it's a coinflip for money? Something seems paradoxical in my thinking here...

 

[comagnum]

It's always 50/50 or worse. no such thing as a "high probability" entry for retail.
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I disagree with that, there are certain setups that are higher probability than other trades -in fact some of these have been 100% accurate over a 7 year span. It is not something the average retail trader that has not committed many years of hard work and a lot of trial and error $ is likely to ever tap into when you consider the avg human attention span is that of a gold fish - less than 5 minutes.

 

[Mtrader]

It's always 50/50 or worse. no such thing as a "high probability" entry for retail.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I disagree with that, there are certain setups that are higher probability than other trades -in fact some of these have been 100% accurate over a 7 year span. It is not something the average retail trader with less than 7-10 years of trading is likely to tap into.

I agree with you. If it would always be 50/50 the final results should be 50/50 too, which is clearly not the case when you are a good trader.

Tlatoani will tell you that you are lost. He told me the same. He is probably lost when it concerns trading.

 

[tlatoani]

I agree with you. If it would always be 50/50 the final results should be 50/50 too, which is clearly not the case when you are a good trader.

Tlatoani will tell you that you are lost. He told me the same. He is probably lost when it concerns trading.

No, your ability to exit the trade, or not, is the only possible edge on any entry. The past does not equal the future.

 

[qxr1011]

Obviously, this is all premised very strongly on whether your system has any merit.
But let's assume it does.

You enter a trade, and then it moves (profitably or unprofitably) to a state where you are uncertain of the direction. Now it's a matter of exiting. If you weren't in a position, you'd neither buy nor sell here. So what should you do at the point where it's a coinflip for money? Something seems paradoxical in my thinking here...

trader's method should always assume and identify high probability trades

when or if, upon entering the trade, the method indicates that this assumption is no longer valid it signals to trader to exit that trade (and reverse)

with working method there should be no uncertainties (by uncertanties i mean not what market will do, nobody knwos that, but what tarder should do)

if one finds the areas of uncertainty it means his method does snot work in those situations (method must be fixed), and trader should exit the trade immediately

 

[kmiklas]

Stop hoping, and get out, NOW!

I knew something was wrong somewhere, but I couldn't spot it exactly. But if something was coming and I didn't know where from, I couldn't be on my guard against it. That being the case I'd better be out of the market.

..if the stock does not perform as it should... this is a danger signal that should be heeded.

If the price is not behaving as expected, it is dangerous to own that financial instrument.

It is flashing a warning signal at you.