Quote from Bitstream:
what books u read to find an edge. ROR
This right here is the reason that 95% fail in the markets. The ? is always, "what book do I need to read", or "can someone teach me". I firmly believe the only way to find an edge in this game is to watch for years on end and take copious notes and try everything you can and lose money at it and (if you are smart) make journal entries of EVERY single trade for years (thousands) and then systematically start grouping them into what works and doesn't and why. I literally filled up a stack of notebooks over 3 feet tall! before I figured it out. And to this day, I continue to journal every single trade and correlate them by strategy, time of day, whether or not I made an error, how I felt, etc... etc. etc... I lost money for 2 years straight before turning the corner. Would it have been faster with a mentor instead of being stubborn and doing it myself? Maybe. maybe not.
Nothing in any book ever helped me one bit because trading is such a "get in there and get dirty" type of endeavor. No book with a picture of a chart that is frozen in time is EVER going to teach you how to trade. Everything works perfectly in the charts in books in hindsight. In the real world its a lot harder.
Whats my edge? I'll even tell you because it won't matter, you'll fail unless s you are willing to put in the time. I trade breakouts and reversals using market internals and pivots in the broad market to gauge direction. Thats it. Obviously it goes deeper than that, but it would take 50 pages to describe how it really works. And like I said, even then, it would not help you because the amount of intuition necessary to know which trade is the one to take can only come from years of practice.
My advice to any and all that want in to this amazing game: Trade 100 shares until you can prove to yourself that you can make a certain amount of points per month that will cover costs. Don't even think about making money because at that lot size you won't. While you do this write down every single thing that happens in every single trade. Then as months go by you'll start to see correlations between time of day, what the S&P was doing (I trade equities exclusively), what was happening internally in the market as you took the trade, etc. etc. etc. The most important data point to compile will be the "mistake" column. After a couple of months, start eliminating mistakes one at a time so that only the good trades are left. Do NOT under any circumstances increase size until you can get 2 good months under your belt and then do so very gradually. I blew it up a couple of times not following this rule, thinking I was ready but was not.
You might make it, you might not, but maverick's post is dead on. I know and understand his methodology. I do something completely different, however the dedication that he talks about to truly make it happen are the same and thats basically what it takes.
Many want it but few want to put in the time and pain.........................
