Why Is The Obvious Not So Obvious?

[Wide Tailz]

I'm sorry but I can't get to specific trading systems, but yes, retail traders are in a great position to capitalize on the mistakes of other traders.

It may take some experience making mistakes of your own before you begin to realize where on the chart you should reverse your buy and sell buttons on your screen.

I disagree with the OP in one area: the books by Tharp and Douglas are useful.

Tharp teaches positive expectancy, tracking it, its variance, and any mistakes you make in execution. He also goes through the basics of developing a system.

Douglas has an excellent few pages at the back of his book on the psychology of price movement, an even covers a series of passive entries to take advantage of it.

As a final hint, we had two great examples in the recent past of "monkeys" getting the upper hand for once, and the aftermath. AMC and GME. There were more lives ruined in those manias than fortunes made. Winner take all finance is the result of monkeys in charge, (this is not to be construed in any way of implicating our own government for distorting markets into huge trends that make no economic sense)........

 

[Wide Tailz]

What could OP mean?

Surely OPportunity, theres no need to complicate things!

Original Poster, sorry for the internet slang.

 

[Mysteron]

Original Poster, sorry for the internet slang.

The question was rhetorical!

 

[Onra]

I'm sorry but I can't get to specific trading systems, but yes, retail traders are in a great position to capitalize on the mistakes of other traders.

It may take some experience making mistakes of your own before you begin to realize where on the chart you should reverse your buy and sell buttons on your screen.

I disagree with the OP in one area: the books by Tharp and Douglas are useful.

Tharp teaches positive expectancy, tracking it, its variance, and any mistakes you make in execution. He also goes through the basics of developing a system.

Douglas has an excellent few pages at the back of his book on the psychology of price movement, an even covers a series of passive entries to take advantage of it.

As a final hint, we had two great examples in the recent past of "monkeys" getting the upper hand for once, and the aftermath. AMC and GME. There were more lives ruined in those manias than fortunes made. Winner take all finance is the result of monkeys in charge, (this is not to be construed in any way of implicating our own government for distorting markets into huge trends that make no economic sense)........

Is your method different from your former thread?
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/catching-tails.239456/

Douglas: is that "Trading in the Zone"?

Thanks.

 

[Wide Tailz]

Blast from the past!

That was a good system. I've discovered many such solutions over the past 12 years of pondering the riddle of the markets. The real paradox is I immediately abandon anything I find that works. I am beginning to think I actually don't want money.

But elliot wave, automated trend following, or any guru based system will give you (good) conventional returns like nysestocks mentioned. A good year would be a 50% return.

"The Obvious", at least as it now appears to me after I finally saw it, could potentially do 10x this according to the OP of this thread, and I now believe it.

Mark Douglas, "the disciplined trader" is who I was referring to.

 

[Laissez Faire]

I'll go ahead state the obvious, since this thread is very old, and devolved into a guru contest.

OP left many clues. 95% lose at short term trading, 5% win. Money flows from the many to the few. When one trader loses, another wins. Therefore the 5% manipulate the 95% (much like in society) toward falling into their innate traps of human nature. The 5% take the other side of the mistakes the 95% keep making. This is as much as I will say.

On the flip side, since trading is ultimately a social contest, the study of sociology can be adapted to see it from two perspectives: functionalist and conflict perspective (for real, this is what they indoctrinate you into when you take the classes).

OP was trolling everyone with hints to see it from the conflict perspective, and here is the functionalist perspective: the market pays you to keep it alive. If "monkeys" had the kind of money the 5% do, they would destroy the market by destabilizing the price, sending it off in huge trends, cornering commodities and creating mayhem for the hedgers who actually need the market for good business practices. The 5% do the opposite. They correct the mistakes the 95% keep making, over and over and over........

While interesting, this post is mostly philosophical and doesn't really add anything that's not been said many times over by the OP and many before him. I also don't think the latter paragraph is correct as there's plenty of "monkeys" with money.

Successful trading, i.e., making money, is about BLASH or SHABL as stated on page one. This is a practical matter and anything else is just chatter - which this thread have in huge supply.

"The Obvious", at least as it now appears to me after I finally saw it, could potentially do 10x this according to the OP of this thread, and I now believe it.

Humbly, what you believe doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is results, i.e., making money or not. There's plenty of people in this thread who claimed to finally 'get it' only to come back later completely dumbfounded.

While I fully believe 10x is possible, I respectfully have to say that I have not seen anything in this thread which will help anyone to achieve that. And it's frankly quite amusing that so many are still following this thread in light of that, but I suppose that's just human nature.

 

[Onra]

"The Obvious", at least as it now appears to me after I finally saw it, could potentially do 10x this according to the OP of this thread, and I now believe it.

Why not be nice to us in this new year and give us a new example of a chart with the Obvious!
Preferably with a box, or one line; so we can puzzle for another year.

 

[Wide Tailz]

The obvious was shown to me in my second month trading by a subscription service I had. It seemed too simple to work, yet the "guru" in this case claimed to be a former broker at a big investment bank and pitched the method as being used by the wealthy banking families he occasionally did business with. Another guru I followed in the distant past was also a former broker, and another was a former market maker, before it got so computerized.

You recall from the OP how most people do not understand how the market really works, but these mild insiders had a better view than most.

Now that I've satisfied my curiosity over 12 years of charts, retraces, automated system development and even some fundamental analysis, I think "the obvious" is really what I need to from here on out. I never found a trading system that fits.

 

[Wide Tailz]

there's plenty of "monkeys" with money.

There's plenty of people in this thread who claimed to finally 'get it' only to come back later completely dumbfounded.

I agree on both points. And the chief monkey is the central banking system driving these huge valuations, enabling other monkeys to jump on board the train and ride the momentum.

But the fed's goal is not to make money trading, like us. That should be obvious......

I wonder what their real motive is?

 

[Wide Tailz]

Why not be nice to us in this new year and give us a new example of a chart with the Obvious!
Preferably with a box, or one line; so we can puzzle for another year.

It was practically laid out right in front of you the the first few dozen pages of this thread.