I see I've been mentioned in this thread.
Let me clarify.
I tested a variation of the system mentioned in the Daytrading 2.0 thread and, for the few months that I backtested (and then a few more months of forward testing) it was a bit profitable.
However, I made modifications to the system because the entire "system" was not listed in the thread.
The original system in the thread was a scalping system, but no mention was ever made of of money management or of stop strategy. Perhaps the OP did not have time to address those issues.
I tried to make it a "scalping" system, but when I backtested it with 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12 point targets on the YM (I think those were the numbers I used, honestly it's been a while), it was overall unprofitable. As you may expect, the number of winning trades increased, but the overall bottom line turned negative because they were not outweighed by the losing trades.
The only way I was able to make it profitable was to hold every trade until the MA we were using changed slope. Sometimes this meant being 10-15 ticks in profit and then a huge tall bar out of nowhere comes and eats away all your profits, but occasionally it meant 40-50+ point winners which did in fact override the losing trades for the time period I was using it.
According to jjrvat, the author of that thread, that was not how the system was meant to be used.
jjrvat taught price action, using MAs as a guide, but I was making trading decisions based partially on price action (HH,HL, LL, LH) and partially on MAs (letting their slopes guide my entries and exits). The reason for this is I was never able to extract sufficient data about "price action" from the thread in order to quantify it into a trading system, so I used the MAs from his examples instead.
I suspect that if I had all the info jjrvat uses to trade maybe I could be profitable with the system used for scalping. I also suspect that there is a discretionary component to it that cannot really be quantified (which is the absolute bane of my trading existence because it is this same excuse that "gurus" use when none of their followers can make money despite the fact that the system is bullshit and the guru isn't making money from trading it, either... I'm not saying this is the case with jjrvat, however, I'm sure he makes money trading and even if he doesn't, I don't really care because he never charged me any money for his info).
But since I didn't have all the info, I tried like hell to make it a scalping system but I couldn't, so I made it a bit longer timeframe and, like I said, it worked for the time period I tested it. It could've been a coincidence because the market action happened to sync up with the dynamics of that system during the months I was using it. I haven't really played around with it too much in the last year because I've been busy with other things. The thread is quite good if you ignore the spam posts and fortune cookie wisdom that a few members clouded up the thread with and I lay out the entire system (my way) in one of the posts.
Overall, it's a good thread because it helped me begin to understand price action, HH/HL/LH/LL, which I had never heard of or conceptualized before. jjrvat was always cool and helpful when I'd PM him, too.
But for the most part, 99% of the "gurus" on ET (and in the trading world in general) are full of shit, don't make money trading, and sell unprofitable systems. If you ask them for specifics, you will either get some vague reply or you will get insulted. If you try their system and can't make it work, it's "obviously some discretionary issue that you're not understanding."
Don't be fooled by their bullshit. Seriously here. If you ask a specific question and do not get a specific answer in return, you're probably dealing with a bullshit artist.
What would you do if you asked your math teacher "I'm confused, what is the next step in solving this equation?" and your math teacher replied "do what the numbers tell you to do"? You'd probably be like "what the fuck? That doesn't help. You're not even really a math teacher, are you?!"
So, when a trading guru gives you some vague bullshit advice of "do what the price tells you to do," don't take it, because that person has no clue what the hell they are talking about.
