Traders who win but really have no clear strategy

Trading skill is innate.

Quote from Red_Ink_inc:

Trust me shortie. You could sit by me for 2 weeks and watch everything. I doubt you or anyone else could code my 'strategy', because there is no strategy. If it could even be partially coded I would have coded it. I do what feels right and mix in a lot of discipline. It's best decribed as organized chaos. 100%discretionary, no 1 trade is like another.

Mr 'Mojo' Risin' :)
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I've only seen a few guys who can trade from their intuition, and they have 30+ years of experience...

The biggest problem for most of us is that our opinions of the market are almost always wrong! LOL... profitable trading goes against human nature... this blog post expands on that: http://bit.ly/JRCGw

So, the best way to give yourself a high probability of success is to create a concrete system or methodology that actually works. Most traders never make it to this point...

Good luck...
 
Quote from chrisdunn:

I've only seen a few guys who can trade from their intuition, and they have 30+ years of experience...

The biggest problem for most of us is that our opinions of the market are almost always wrong! LOL... profitable trading goes against human nature... this blog post expands on that: http://bit.ly/JRCGw

So, the best way to give yourself a high probability of success is to create a concrete system or methodology that actually works. Most traders never make it to this point...

Good luck...
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i am trading and working on a strategy how to improve my trading at the same time. :D

my philosophy is that one needs to keep constantly adding new set-ups, rules, ideas to his arsenal. and also to improve on the old ideas. in the beginning, the ideas need to be concrete enough so that they can be tested on a computer or/and in real trading. later, i think if one has played enough setups enough times he could reach a point where he could apply them and modify them on the fly as needed even during fast intraday trading.
 
I agree with you that there is a need for the learning curve, just like a sniper who need to learn the basic how handle a gun and how to shoot and after that the innate skill come to play. That what I meant.

Quote from shortie:

i am sure there were learning curves for Dustin and Red_Ink before they became big shots.
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all you need is a 1 hour course daytrading.

being a professional daytrader is easier than learning to drive a standard vehicle. too easy

most traders just don't have the capital or they get addicted to gambling overleveraged etc that gets them into trouble or blow out. (lack of discipline.) everybody should read the desiplined trader .or trading for a living.

you be surprise how many daytrading hobbyist are out there. you got seniors daytrading and college kids daytrading. swing trading and the brokerages and market makers they have algorithms like the one stolen from goldman sachs all automated trades.



Quote from Sky123987:

I often hear about these traders, those who really don't have any concrete strategy, who just basically take a moment to digest everything that's been going on, like what the market is doing, if the stock has news lately, what a specific commodity is doing (if applicable), what other stocks in the sector are doing.

...And then they come up with a feel for if there is bias to the upside or downside?

Do these traders actually exist or is this basically a political answer to avoid not telling you their real strategy (but rightfully so)
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As someone who used to trade the SP (the floor traded SP500) with phone and "gut feel" I found that to be incredibly stressful. While i had some high level guides, such as $tick, $tran etc every day was new.

Ultimately, I couldn't shake the concern that I somehow just were lucky and that I really didn't have any edge or skills.

I eventually migrated to systematic trading as it fit my personality much better. But I have the deepest respect for traders like Dustin and Red_Ink, who actually know how to trade.
 
My definition of strategy is probably different from the OPs, in that I'm a purely discretionary trader who doesn't believe in anything but the most fundamental TA, but I have a trading plan in terms of what instruments I trade, when I trade them, position sizes, maximum losses etc.

I always look for momentum so this morning started by losing a bit of money on jobless claims at 8:30am when ES and ZF both went a bit sideways and stopped me out. I then scanned earnings from the previous close and the morning to prepare a watchlist of strong winners and losers (SNDK, T, EBAY, RS and 2 or 3 others) then waited until market open to see what direction the market was headed and to take the appropriate trade.

Unfortunately I made the right call on SNDK but happened to enter at exactly the wrong time and got stopped out before it headed south in earnest. However I saw the market was lifting strongly and jumped on T for a strong gain before I closed my position very quickly as it turned over on 10am's home sales data. I then held on until 10:30's natural gas inventories data, figuring anything short of a home run would send the contract lower due to the recent run-up, and sure enough I was rewarded with a quick profit although I decided to take profits very early into the first retracement, leaving a lot of money on the table.

At this point I normally keep an eye on my TradeTheNews headlines looking for intraday opportunities on takeover chatter and the like, but the NYSE/NASDAQ internals were so strong that I entered small positions on the ES and ZF and wished later I had gone all in on the ZF as it dropped like a rock until about 3pm. I slapped myself on the wrist as my plan doesn't normally playing "the market" (e.g. ES) intraday and I should have done so on paper before risking real money.

All in all I pumped up my trading account over 6% on the day which is about 10 times my daily goal, but of course earnings season is like shooting fish in a barrel for a momentum/news trader. I've been "winning" in that I've been able to increase my trading capital by a few percent per week average for about 6 months working at it full-time as a relative beginner, and after initial losses and rookie mistakes I've found the secret for me is a) having a plan and sticking to it including what instruments to trade, when to trade them, position sizes and most importantly stop losses, and b) a software platform that automatically sets stops for me when it enters orders, to prevent me from taking large "discretionary losses" (originally NinjaTrader but now ZeroLine Trader).

I don't know if this counts as having a strategy or not, but I'll stick with it until it stops working or I find something better!
 
Quote from Sky123987:

I often hear about these traders, those who really don't have any concrete strategy, who just basically take a moment to digest everything that's been going on, like what the market is doing, if the stock has news lately, what a specific commodity is doing (if applicable), what other stocks in the sector are doing.

...And then they come up with a feel for if there is bias to the upside or downside?

Do these traders actually exist or is this basically a political answer to avoid not telling you their real strategy (but rightfully so)
More...

when one trades one thing day after day, like ES for me, intuition on PA does develop and becomes a major tool to use. all of my other stuff, like MP, delta, internals, etc are in the picture as well, but it is intuition that is responsible for actually pulling the trigger.
 
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