The current ES intra day scalping trading method I am trading, I backtested it ten years on tick data, every contract month, then forwarded tested it three years over every contract, every tick and either my staff or myself have been trading it past several months, between sample size of 67,600 plus trades and 4,200 plus real time trades, I know inside and out what my drawdown has been for this time period, mean ave of losing trades in a row, mean ave of winning trades in a row, broken down when mental protective stops should be expanded or reduced, and dozens more of stats on averaging down. I know I can expect based on weekly percentage of 5% losing trades based on original entry, over 50% breakeven trades and as low is 38% winning trades of 2-8 ticks, again all based on past and several months of real time has proven to me that backtesting has not lied.
And for fun, I always back test systems on tick data from 1987 of S&P500 futures contract. Had overall same results. Price is random and that because all based on human emotion, do people think something has more/less value. Plain and simple. I have some data going back to 1920s on commodities, some spotty as war years(world war 2) was tough to find data as I believe not all days were open, but you take some systems like the "Mystery system" produced by Peter Aan or Donchianâs Four-Week Rule Trading System, simple but elegant, huge drawdowns but overall makes more than losses in ten years of trading.
Crops get planted here in the States approx. same time each year and harvested, unless there was weather concerns in November, prices decline more often than not and peak out in June/July. But still comes down what "value" people put on the instrument traded.
Traders do piss poor trading cause they simple don't understand much about "WHY" prices happen, and until they do, they most likely will keep moving their money into those that do.
Too much time spend on the getting in and not nearly enough on the getting out, or reasons of not getting in when a signal appears.
Those who believe there are no "Holy Grail" methods? LOL Would you expect those who have them would tell anyone? A skilled trader learns to adapt or has seen so much in price bars, they have rules for every single strange occurrence that many say there are, you play the game long enough, there are no strange occurrences. I been playing the game for 36 years, you think I haven't see anything just once?
This statement shows me what you don't know. I lease seats so I can trade and not pay retail, I make decent coin just making one tick. Whatever I can make dealing with the public would be chump change, why make pennies when I make ten dollars? I make 100% less fees than make 20%? LOL, good one. Dealing with the public is a royal pain in the arse. Trading is stressful enough and whatever you could pay me would never be enough, it is putting in so much time, you take vacation time off and you don't go anywhere but study the markets, you in your office almost every waking hour when you don't have to be somewhere else. People invite you over for parties and you constantly drawing bars charts on drink napkins, people talk to you and your mind is somewhere else, your wife or girlfriend is chatting some drab story and you think how you could have avoided some trade, your whole life is in the game.
Before getting into trading, I use to fly to Vegas two days a week and played one deck Blackjack, you bet'cha it was easy to make money every weekend, but you had to have a speciality, I played between 3-6am, no longer than 20 minutes at any casino and acted drunk, played one on one with dealer, 4 aces, 16 10s, when deck is high card rich you play heavy, when dealer show card is 6 or lower, you split or double down when you can. Didn't want any casino to see you win consistently, didn't want to play when 9-5 people awake, use your toes to keep track and always short sleeve shirts. Got real boring, it not like you could put on 100 contracts and have no one else see you winning more often than losing when casinos want you to lose. I would actually make a scene once in awhile that I lost big to pit boss and ask to be comped something, he thought I lost and I got something for free, but the dealer never saw I was putting chips in my pocket.
You got to put in the 10,000 hours plus, and best by doing it yourself if you going to compete against the best.
You got to get off your arse and learn to program, the better you can code, the more you can test. This is game better to be self sufficient.