Quote from drcha:
Probably I should qualify this first by saying I'm not a day trader.
You left out one step: keep doing it it over and over again, which you can do if you have a tight initial stop.
What happens to people is that they go through a period of non-trendiness, they get whipsawed a lot, and then they give up on their method, probably just when it about to start working again. It takes patience to trade long trends, and tenacity to keep trading them when you go through a rough patch.
I agree. The repeat process was assumed, but you are right that it may be good to make it explicit ( for central limit theorem to show the edge or the lack of it).
Your observation applies to all time frames.