Quote from Ripley:
..talking about pure markets (ie. futures)
IMPOSSIBLE & too EFFICIENT
You are
almost correct when it comes to futures. I guarantee you that it is not true for equities.
As to futures, while the edges are far more complex to find, I assure you that it is not luck that makes one futures trader profitable and another not.
Sadly, I realize that this post and every single post on this thread is meaningless because you only understand when you understand, and not before. Understanding is not incremental [as far as the higher cortex is concerned], it just all of a sudden happens one day and then the cloud lifts [study the way the brain forms an image of a dog, from the time the light strikes the retina to the time the entire mind forms the image - it is similar to the steps required to forming a profitable trading strategy. Be able to give an exact description of what happens.]
The first "trade" that you have to make when you come on ET is to know how to filter the crap out. You have not done that yet, and may never. I have looked at every single post in this thread as an experiment to see if I would have found anything of importance when I was not a profitable futures trader. I found none except
Dustins posts, which are worth their weight in gold. Then I went back and reread the thread to see if any posts are helpful as a profitable futures trader, and I found very few. Here they are:
Quote from damon_achey:
Profitability is just a matter of getting the right combinations together. After you know how to use all the tools you won't be profitable. But you probably won't be profitable without the tools either.
After the education to know what you're doing... I believe the key is to find the strategies that fit your personality, the markets that fit your personality, and the strategies that fit your markets. This combination isn't as easy to piece together as it would seem at first glance.
Quote from battle river:
i had a hell of a time with stock futures also. don't know why. i switched to bonds and found success.well,better than i was doing anyway.
Quote from bundlemaker:
It took me over 5 years to get this game. I refused to understand that your opponent is your own self. I had every rational reason to explain this away. I couldn't accept that I indeed was my own worst enemy.
Granted, you need a trading methodology that works, but many are available. I talk to people every day that make money from the markets, quietly, at home, day in and day out. And, I talk to many more who are convinced it's impossible.
There is a place for everyone
And finally, in an ironic twist, the most important post in the whole thread:
Quote from Ripley:
..only a matter of time before you run into probabilities... 
But you don't know what that means on a personal level
because those posts are meaningless until they are not. Instead of a mathematical level, give another definition for the word
probability on a personal level. What is it that probability means psychologically? What does it instill in you? That will tie the mathematical with the personal. It is critical because it is when you know that trading becomes like getting a paycheck at a job.
So, in summary, my post is worthless too. It's only worth is that it points out the two or three posts that were actually helpful in this thread. You see, ET is a kind of training ground for trading. You see a lot of mumbo jumbo that is mostly noise trading with zero edge. That is 98% of the posts on ET or on this thread. Then poof, a posts or a trade comes by that
contains information content, or in trading parlance, the market is giving up edge.
When you first came on ET, I almost immediately put you on ignore because you were part of the noise. I just took you off ignore because you are on the line now between being a waste of time, and not.
nitro
