When Indicators Don't Lag

[dbphoenix]

Which is essentially the point that Magee was making decades ago.

What I find most interesting about this "you can make tons of money with a low winrate" business is that it originated with Van Tharp, who was a complete failure as a trader. The low-winrate people simply ignore the psychological ramifications of continued failure (the chief reason why most traders cut their profits short). Which tells me a great deal about their trading ability and about their trading experience and how much of it is simply manufactured for message boards.

 

[i am nobody]

Successful trading is extremely simple. The majority of a trader's focus needs to be on trade/risk management.

You have a very narrow vision on things and have no open mind at all.
For simple people everything is simple. At least 70% of all traders are never successful in the long term. So this must all be real idiots, according to you. They cannot even make easy money.

Two men meet and start a conversation:
1: What is your job?
2: I paint cars.
1: Oh what a coincidence, I paint cars too!
2: We are busy with a revolutionary process in painting. We are testing paint that is very strong so that paint does not get damaged in a carwash anymore.
1: But why should you go to a carwash?
2: When your car is dirty it should be cleaned.
1: But the cars that we paint never become dirty!
2: That's impossible, every car becomes dirty. You are stupid.
1: No I am serious. We use nano technology to paint cars so these cars reject all dirt because of this technology.
2: What is nanotechnology?

Knowledge is for every person different. You can be an expert in a certain area but at the same time an idiot in another area. So don't judge others because you might miss the knowledge to understand him.
For me support resistance and drawing lines is complete nonsense. Why? Because to me it does not make sense. Is it nonsense? No, because I know people who use it successfully. I am not attracted by these techniques and maybe even not capable to use it correctly, but I will never say that I will not work. Many people forget about their own limitations, they think they know everything. Almost always there is a relation between this behavior and the IQ of this person. Theoretically the smarter a person is the better he will be able to admit his own limitations.

 

[Brianharvey]

Do you DAYtrade, I-Am-Nobody? If so, I take it you Are you a time+sales/Dom trader instead of using charts?
cheers

 

[Buy1Sell2]

Imagine the opposite argument from what I contend. It sounds like this:
---"Money management is not important to successful trading. There is no need to place emphasis on how much you can lose on a trade." ---
Sound like a good plan?

 

[fortydraws]

Knowledge is for every person different. You can be an expert in a certain area but at the same time an idiot in another area. So don't judge others because you might miss the knowledge to understand him.

For me support resistance and drawing lines is complete nonsense. Why? Because to me it does not make sense. Is it nonsense? No, because I know people who use it successfully. I am not attracted by these techniques and maybe even not capable to use it correctly, but I will never say that I will not work. Many people forget about their own limitations, they think they know everything. Almost always there is a relation between this behavior and the IQ of this person. Theoretically the smarter a person is the better he will be able to admit his own limitations.

The continued existence of trolls means that this frustration for those who view the world such as you will likewise continue. Six weeks ago - a different set of trolls, but we were making the same points you make today:

As I understand it, trading is essentially placing bets on future outcomes, and as such one needs an edge in order to succeed - some way of determining those moments when the probability of one event occurring next is greater than any other immediate outcome. And imo gaining an edge in trading comes down to gathering and interpreting information about the current state of balance or imbalance between supply and demand. SLA/AMT is one way of gathering, organizing, and interpreting the information available to us. But so are moving averages, oscillators, MACD, order books, fluctuations in the size of the bid/ask spread, volume traded at various prices, volume traded by dollar amount and on and on and on. To the extent that any of those methods provide an edge, they do so by providing information based on the Law of Supply and Demand, even if the trader employing the method doesn't understand it in those terms.

I can't or don't use most of those tools to my benefit. But I know there are traders - both individuals and institutions - that do use them to success. The fact that I can't use those methods has no affect on me emotionally, psychologically, philosophically, or intellectually. I am neither jealous nor distrustful of those who approach this activity differently from me. The fact that I do not understand how to use market profile to make a consistently profitable trading plan is no reason for me to doubt that there are traders who can and do use it for just that purpose. There is more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. I have no need to learn more than one, and have no desire to spend my days criticizing practitioners of a method different from my own.

I cannot conceive of starting a discussion thread to "argue" against a trading method that I myself do not understand. Unless I were trying to make myself feel better about some shortcoming. Or I were an unrelenting narcissist.

 

[i am nobody]

Do you DAYtrade, I-Am-Nobody? If so, I take it you Are you a time+sales/Dom trader instead of using charts?
cheers

I daytrade on mathematical models.

 

[dbphoenix]

Imagine the opposite argument from what I contend. It sounds like this:
---"Money management is not important to successful trading. There is no need to place emphasis on how much you can lose on a trade." ---
Sound like a good plan?

No, it doesn't. But your "money management" plan makes no sense to anyone who understands simple arithmetic.

 

[fortydraws]

Imagine the opposite argument from what I contend. It sounds like this:
---"Money management is not important to successful trading. There is no need to place emphasis on how much you can lose on a trade." ---
Sound like a good plan?

Show me the post where DbPhoenix or any of those discussing SLA/AMT suggest that? You are becoming another marketsurfer - truth be damned, misrepresentations, lies, and ad hominem arguments full speed ahead.

 

[dbphoenix]

I'll repeat from his other rantfest:

Since you're so well-versed on the ins and outs of the SLA/AMT: under what conditions does the trader stop trading entirely?

 

[fortydraws]

I daytrade on mathematical models.

"Bullshit - let me see your tax returns! How about a real time call! We're not discussing the Pythagorean theorem here - we're about making money dammit!"

I figured I'd save the trolls some time.