Quote from Thunderdog:
Here's the thing that I cannot quite comprehend. As I understand it, it takes months of "study" and "work" to understand and employ the SCT, PVT or whatever Jack is dispensing. And, of course, without the ubiquitously referenced "paradigm shift," there can be no progress. I find the premise puzzling.
I can understand the need for a fair amount of study and work to construct a profitable trading strategy and then use it effectively. Perhaps I am slower than average, because it has taken me years of effort, money and large dollops of humility when I least expected it. And I am nowhere near as profitable as some of Jack's students claim to be. Not yet, and probably not ever. However, to require all that time and effort merely to understand a trading method that is reportedly readily available to all who want it, boggles my mind.
Here's the thing. Towards the end of the process (thus far), it has been one of simplification for me. Whereas I started years ago with a fairly simple idea, after having read more books on trading than perhaps I should have, I then began the process of complicating the method as a means of dealing with the losses that followed. What made me turn the corner from unprofitable to modestly profitable (by ET's lofty standards) was a reversion to simplicity. Perhaps not quite as simple (or should I say, not quite as simplistic) as what I had started out with, but nowhere near as complex as when I was at my most unprofitably befuddled. Essentially, after accumulating all of the nonsense that I had read about trading, the productive work was in the shedding.
So, based singularly on my own experience, I find it puzzling that a complicated method that takes so much time and effort to learn can truly be as profitable as presented. However, and also based singularly on my own experience, I do not find it at all surprising that some people are irresistibly drawn and attracted to complexity, depending on their stage of development.
But that is just my own take on the matter.