Quote from xkr1962:
I realised if I was gonna succeed at this trading business I would have to find a profitable trader to mentor me. I had naively thought I was clever enough to master this business on my own. It cost me a ton of cash in stupid trades.
I found a mentor by using forums and looking for guys that could seemingly talk the talk and walk the walk. A few of us got together and virtually begged the trader to teach us.
That was back in late 2006, even after spending a year in a live room with him, watching him call trades live in front of us I would say most still couldn't trade his method profitably.
What it did do for me however was convince me that his method worked and was pretty much bullet proof I was the reason I couldn't trade it profitably, I was missing a critical part of the puzzle (it did in fact turn out I HAD missed the particular rule to his method that made all the difference).
It took me two years and 1000's of hours more study to work it out and prove his method was better than everything else I had tried, EW, fibs, bollingers, channels, fundis etc I had his benchmark nothing else touched it.
It was an ass backwards way to learn what is best but I got there in the end.
Find a method or a pattern you like, work out why it wins when it wins then why it fails when it fails, eventually you will stop taking the failures.
I hope that makes some sense.