Quote from marketsurfer:
There are many ways to make money from the market, TA makes no sense common or otherwise. TA makes trading look super easy, what could be easier than following a line or an indicator?
You really have no clue what technical price action analysis is about.
You know whatâs easy?
Putting on a trade when it seems like price has run too high or fallen too low.
Trading without a stop and averaging down because price ALWAYS does X.
Moving a stop to break even as soon as a trade becomes a bit profitable because that way itâs a free ride and you canât lose.
Taking a few losses, then giving up on that method and finding a new one.
Having a profitable trade and calling it day to avoid risking that profit.
Posting on trading forums âTA is uselessâ âTA doesnât workâ âTA is junk scienceâ âStops are for amateursâ â90% of small retail traders lose, they just loseâ, yet offering not one iota of useful information such as what DOES work, how to trade without stops and not lose your ass, and what the 10% who win are doing right.
Now, you know whatâs hard?
Buying when price is making higher highs and selling when price is making lower lows.
Patiently waiting for a reversal signal before trading against a defined trend.
Placing a limit order to buy or sell as price pulls back to the price where the weak hands moved their stops to break even and getting slippage-free fills.
You know what else is hard?
Spending a couple thousand hours studying intraday price gyrations to catalog everything that happens when price turns and makes a tradable move in the opposite direction.
Determining which of those things happen more often than not, and how much more often than not.
Defining in words and pictures the price footprints (chart patterns and/or indicator patterns) leading into these tradable moves.
Identifying setups that look good in isolation, but tend to fail more often than not in certain price environments.
Identifying the price environments that cause these setups to fail.
Defining in words and pictures exactly what these price environments look like.
Identifying price levels at which the odds of a trade reaching a profit target before hitting a maximum loss shift from positive to negative.
Identifying the optimal methods of exiting a trade when this happens.
Writing a complete trading plan based on the months of research this takes.
Learning to trust and trade this plan without screwing up.
Screwing up.
Trying again.
Doing well and believing you've mastered the trader's mindset.
Screwing up.
Finally trusting that all you need are odds in your favor and the ability to stop second guessing (Thinking While Trading), and finally humbly following your trading plan based on solid technical analysis.
Surf, you trade fundamental price drivers, ammo trades market profile, RW trades DeMark exhaustion, Josh uses market delta, Pat trades price blocks, Handle123 watches volume shifts, some use Bollinger bands, others use stochastics, and yet others use plain naked bar charts. I donât believe Iâve ever been disrespectful of anyoneâs methods, and Iâve never said any of them donât work and are useless.
All I claim is that technical price action methods allow a trader to produce consistent profits over the long haul through varying market conditions.
As for the combine challenge, Iâve nothing to prove. Iâve proven TA works by calling trades in advance many, many times, and Iâve proven it by teaching these methods to several traders.
I actively day trade two separate accounts with two different brokers, and I actively swing trade two other accounts. If someone wants badly enough for me to put aside my profit opportunities to prove TA works by participating in a âjust for funâsimulated trading combine for 10 days because s/he believes TA is useless junk science, s/he can fork over $50K to cover the profits I may generate trading my 5 lot minimum in the combine (and if I generate more because we have some more days in crude oil like we had last week), tell you what, I'll give 30 extra days to cover the difference.
