two worst ideas

fxwannaB · May 3, 2015

Ferdinand said:
read the tape, review your shitty trades, keep a journal,

you can go broke doing that.

fxwannaB · May 3, 2015

Ferdinand said:
The little trade where you confidently risked 2X and knew you had a good chance of making 10X (or more) — THAT’S the one to worship.

you can go broke doing that.

dbphoenix · May 3, 2015

fxwannaB said:
you can go broke doing that.

Any chance you could contribute a bit more than "you can go broke doing that"?

fxwannaB · May 3, 2015

All the above are a long Journey to the end of night...

fxwannaB · May 3, 2015

The core is to discover an edge. An edge is found in market structure. A pattern that repeats..

you know when you have an edge... you literally print money. If you struggle, you don't have an edge.

fxwannaB · May 3, 2015

A plan, discipline, skills... are necessary too but they are accessories... the core is the edge.

dbphoenix · May 3, 2015

On the other hand, one could argue that the plan is the edge if the plan is based on market structure.

(You needn't make a separate post for each sentence)

kut2k2 · May 3, 2015

Handle123 said:
Way too may people talk about "Win rates", trading is NOT about winning in my book, it is all about learning how to not/or not often lose. So let's discuss Loss rate, Breakeven rate, both true breakeven(in/out same price) which after fees/time is a loss and breakeven plus one tick(if this covers fees/time), does anyone concentrate on any of these? You don't read about it much, newbies find it boring, it is all I think about now.

Really?

Lossrate = 1 - winrate

They're right, that is boring. Winning isn't everything but that doesn't mean it's nothing. Without winning, there's no point in trading. You can easily minimize your losses by simply not trading. (The above equation applies only to active traders, it is meaningless for non-traders.)

People who overemphasize winrate display a lack of understanding of positive expectation. Sure it's nice to have a high winrate but that's not an absolute necessity for success. And those who size their trades on winrate alone are in for a rude awakening.

dbphoenix · May 3, 2015

kut2k2 said:
People who overemphasize winrate display a lack of understanding of positive expectation. Sure it's nice to have a high winrate but that's not an absolute necessity for success. And those who size their trades on winrate alone are in for a rude awakening.

On the other hand, those who emphasize positive expectation to the exclusion of all else ignore the psychological ramifications of that focus, ignoring as well the fact that the individual who seems to have been the first to apply Expectancy Theory to trading failed as a trader.

There is for some reason a decided tendency in at least a few trading forums to assume that a high winrate is always coincident with a low P:L. This need not be the case. If one knows what he's doing and is trading practically rather than theoretically, a reasonably high winrate and a reasonably high P:L are both achievable.

i am nobody · May 3, 2015

fxwannaB said:
you can go broke doing that.

For almost every " you go broke" I can give you an example that you go broke, but I can also give you an example you can become rich.

Many times arguing about statements made reminds me of lawyers: depending from if they are defending the criminal or the victim, they have a completely different story for the same facts.
Many times it is not: do this but never do that.
But more a healthy mixture of this and that.
All depends of the way the trader trades.