As I don't read as well as you write, I have to ask. Regarding the importance of entries, by 'long-term successful trading' do you mean the trader's success over a period of years, or successfully holding a position/trade for an extended period?
You're
very tactful, and it isn't my first language: sorry for the unintended ambiguity.
I meant "success over the months/years" not "long trade-holding durations".
Anyway, it would be interesting to hear what is on your list above 'entries'.
I think that to be steadily successful as a trader, you have to pay attention to lots and lots of different things, and you need to get
all of them right, really: you need to fail only with any
one of them for the wheels to start coming off, and for potential overall profit to turn into actual overall loss.
In that sense, listing them "in order of importance" is perhaps artificial and arbitrary, but I think perhaps they have varying degrees of "significance" in the extent to which each affects the aspirant's prospects. (For example, I think beginning traders quite often imagine than an "entry-method" and a "trading system" are more or less the same thing, and this is
far from realistic!
).
I think the things I'd put above "entries" on the "scale of significance" include understanding enough about statistics and probability to be able to work out confidently (and correctly!) whether or not your trading plan has a genuine positive expectancy, understanding why risk-management is more important than profit-maximization - including sensible calculation of position-sizes, "psychology" in general (on which I can't really begin to comment, given my own almost total lack of insight, as an "Aspie" myself, into others' emotions/perceptions), and the specifics of trade-management (e.g. exits, the initial positioning and maybe adjustments of stop-losses, etc.), without all of which "making good entries" doesn't help so much, anyway? I think the idea (surprisingly often seen in forums!) that "all you need to do is make good entries with the right direction and everything else will eventually take care of itself anyway" is
absolutely delusional.
My contention is that you need to be able to identify reasonably good entries
as well as all the above, though.
I know not everyone will agree with this, but I always think that for beginners, on the subject of "entries", understanding the general concept that one ought to be trying to learn to identify potentially good long entries in an uptrend and short ones in a downtrend is enough to be going on with, while they concentrate on mastering all the "more significant" stuff mentioned above. I wince when I see beginners being taught to select their entries according to "signals" from five different indicators they don't really understand, as if the indicators and entries themselves are somehow "the most important thing", when they're just
not. I think those are often the people still dreaming of finding a "perfect, multi-indicator-driven system" five years later, and they're often also the people whose "five years' experience" is actually one month's experience repeated 60 times over. Just my skepchick perspective.
