Why Can't I Trade with the Trend
- Thread starter Flashboy
- Start date
Yes, but patrons must use the spittoon.
Quote from hank rollins:
yeah, man. i stand by my statement.
think about it.... you never know when the "trend" is going to end, and what part of the "trend" you entered the trade in. if you have a winning trade...you can say---i caught the trend, i am with the trend. a losing trade, obviously you are not with the trend. you only KNOW for sure about the trend after you enter the trade and the trend is directly related to your success in the trade or lack there of.
if you flip a coin 10 times and comes up heads 10 times, are you in a "heads" trend ? see what i mean ?
nice to see you here !
Evidently you believe that trends do in fact exist....but only in hindsight. This is an immense improvement to the nononsense view that trends don't exist, eventhough even a cursory view of a price chart on virtually any time interval reveals an obvious trend of one kind or another.
I presume that when you say that a trend only exists in "hindsight" you are essentially saying that the trend is non-predictable. This of course is going to reflect your experience with prediction....which I presume in your case has been sub-par.
Just a thought though. I think it is possible to determine the conditions upon which the trend "might" change. One need only enter a trade then to find out if this is so. If it is not so, the price will soon tell him he is wrong. And if you have selected the right kind of conditions then it may also be so that one may not have to risk much to find out if the trend is in fact changing.
But one thing my Daddy used to tell me: "Son, you can't go bear hunting with a switch". Meaning: if you want to ride a 3-day trend, you can't do it with a 2 point trailing stop. And, it's very difficult to do by using a 5 minute chart. My guess is that the 5 minute chart has predicted 100 of the last 5 decent 3 day moves.
Either way, we know that trends do in fact exist. They exist in every time frame and are obvious upon inspection of a price chart. That leaves it up to the trader to inspect what takes place at the beginnings and endings of trends so that he may have a foundation for a strategy the next time said conditions take place.
Once a trend has started, we cannot know when it will end....this being the other corollory to some of the statements here. In fact, we know through logic that in any trend there is only one beginning point, and one ending point. Therefore, it seems clear that if one were to make a trade in the direction of the trend then the odds vastly favor him, since the likelihood that you could pick the exact low or high are almost remote. And if you do? That's what stops are for. The point is that the uncertainty of knowing when a trend begins works in your favor when applied to the time that the trend ends...it's equally uncertain.
My last comment would be that trends begin and end in a small time frame. But successful 3 day moves need more in place than simply something negative in a small time frame. Therefore, to trade with the bigger trends one needs to be observant to more than the small time frames.
OldTrader
The question is not, "Do trends exist?" Of course they do, in your imagination when looking backward.
The real issue is whether or not past price action determines future price action. That would be a "trend" before the fact, the only sort you can make money on.
Quote from NickelScalper:
The question is not, "Do trends exist?" Of course they do, in your imagination when looking backward.
The real issue is whether or not past price action determines future price action. That would be a trend before the fact, the only sort you can make money on. [/QUOTE
Past price does influence future price action (duh). Imagine a completely random price action.. would you rely upon it? Would you risk your money on it? Of course not, traders/investors rely on a small but certain non-randomness to the markets. This teeny tiny "predictability" underlies all markets without which would completely collapse. Withot any structure the entire system collapses. Why would anyone trade a completely random system.. Would you trade a coin flip?? Of course not.. duh
if one doesn't know when a trend will end, what good is a trend before you enter the trade?
ever try looking at a chart from randomly generated prices within the ATR of an actual stock? there are obvious past trends apparent in this quasi-random data--but they are untradeable.
once again--if you flip a coin ten times, it comes up 10 times heads, are you in a heads trend?
regards.
Quote from Jane Doe:
Quote from NickelScalper:
The question is not, "Do trends exist?" Of course they do, in your imagination when looking backward.
The real issue is whether or not past price action determines future price action. That would be a trend before the fact, the only sort you can make money on. [/QUOTE
Past price does influence future price action (duh). Imagine a completely random price action.. would you rely upon it? Would you risk your money on it? Of course not, traders/investors rely on a small but certain non-randomness to the markets. This teeny tiny "predictability" underlies all markets without which would completely collapse. Withot any structure the entire system collapses. Why would anyone trade a completely random system.. Would you trade a coin flip?? Of course not.. duh
no, no, no, no , jane. you are totally and completely confused.
the market relies on traders faulty perception of predictibility, not the other way around.
the market is not random, by the classical definition of randomness, but it is random within a set framework--- generally refered to as the ATR in TA speak.