TheBramble
Legendary member
- Messages
- 8,394
- Likes
- 1,170
The winning system you take from demo to live, is unlikely to be the system you end up trading successfully – if you end up trading successfully at all.
While there is a great deal of difference between trading demo funds and real funds and while there are ways to mitigate the problems you will encounter en route, you will likely find after your first set of failed trades that you’ll lose faith with your ‘winning system’ and try all number of on-the-fly fixes, new systems, signals and indicators to make up for and take your mind off your failures and prove, if only to yourself, you’re a ‘good trader’.
The thing is, the probabilities are that you’re not a good trader and that you’re far more likely to join the large percentage that fail, one or more times, before giving up for good.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find your level, hit your stride, find your metre – whatever metaphor you want to use – and it’ll click into place. You’ll no longer dread the start of a new trading day – you’ll look forward to it. You’ll no longer feel relaxed and calm only when NOT in a trade and stressed and anxious when you are. You’ll find you’re no longer looking for excuses NOT to place that trade (make a cup of tea, make a phone call, walk the dog, go for a run) – you’ll know exactly when and if to place it. You’ll no longer start to tense when your position moves against you – you’ll smile and feel good that that means you’ve just established a lower risk level, or if you’re already in profit, a higher profit level that you’ll come out at if it gets hit again. Far more of your trades will go into positive territory right off the bat and those that don’t will move against you far more quickly and let you know you were wrong without you having to hang on every up tick and down tick for – cheering one and despairing at the other – for an eternity. You’ll no longer stick to your target (an ethereal thing at best) and give back all your profits as it retreats, having reached within a few ticks of the completely arbitrary goal, you’ll let the price action let you know when it’s time to take your profits (or your losses). Each trade setup, entry, management and exit will be in perfect harmony with your system and your own personal psychological needs in relation to trading a system. You’ll be trading the perfect timeframe and the perfect system for your personality and your needs. Until you find a methodology that suits you perfectly you’re just spinning your wheels and likely bleeding capital. If you don’t feel good trading – stop. Right now. ‘Cos it ain’t going to work otherwise.
How do you find this perfectly suited system? There are as many ways as there are bods trying to find a way. Pretty unhelpful.
What’s the point of this post? I’ve just waded through an entire weekends’ worth of the normal “I want a system”, “I’ve got a system and it’ll work for you” and “How do I make Money” posts. All chasing and offering the wrong things. And they’re the wrong things because none of them know YOU or address YOUR needs.
There are an infinite number of combinations of usage of price and volume and time. Such a large set of instruments and markets they may as well be infinite. And the range between the most well informed, highly teched and savvy institutional investor and the most clueless, under-funded, inexperienced and ill-equipped mug punter is so large as to beggar belief. Where do you think you are you on the spectrum? Where do think you REALLY are on that spectrum?
A very small percentage of people make money in trading. The odds of you doing so are miniscule.
Those that are making money are using techniques of such simplicity it would amaze you. In fact, it probably wouldn’t, as you’ve already covered that in your first few months interest and education in trading – and then put it behind you as being too simple to be worth further consideration.
You’ve gone off to pursue the newest and latest fads and techniques and systems and indicators, without realising you already have all you need to make the bare bones of a system that will suit you perfectly. You’re entranced with the prospect of being a Darksider. It’s a fabrication. An attempt to create a sense of asceticism or elitism which does you no favours at all and offers you no advantage, but gives a good laugh to those that think you’re stupid enough to believe that that’s the only way to go. You’re convinced a splay of indicators, or Gann fans, or Elliott waves or Di Jango’s reversal trines will be the ‘solution’. They my or they may not be. You’re convinced that trading a pure VWAP engine with no charts or indicators at all is going to be the only way for you. You feel the raw random noise of the 1 minute chart is the only place to be or the Daily gives you the freedom to be largely relaxed in stops and targets. It makes no difference. There’s no difference in the way you make your money be it with bar charts devoid of any further information or if charts covered to the exclusion of all white space with indicators of all manner, hue and type, or a bare excel style numbers grid. Your profits are made whatever way you make them and no one way is better than any other.
But unless you’re totally in tune with the way you’re trading, you’ll feel uneasy when you’re in a trade and you’ll fear the trade moving against you and you’ll feel varying degrees of pain when it does. Your profits will be fewer and smaller than your losses and you wont have any confidence in what you’re doing and you’ll feel insecure, lacking, a loser and a failure. What to do? Stop. Simply stop. You’re not going to be consistently profitable trading if this is where you’re at.
Go back to basics. Look at the charts, with whatever indicators you want to be using and just LOOK. Simple stuff like lower lows, lower highs or higher lows, higher highs. If you can’t see them – they’re not there. If you can see them –what is that telling you? They’re giving you direction, entry, S&R and exit points. How much more could you ask for?
While there is a great deal of difference between trading demo funds and real funds and while there are ways to mitigate the problems you will encounter en route, you will likely find after your first set of failed trades that you’ll lose faith with your ‘winning system’ and try all number of on-the-fly fixes, new systems, signals and indicators to make up for and take your mind off your failures and prove, if only to yourself, you’re a ‘good trader’.
The thing is, the probabilities are that you’re not a good trader and that you’re far more likely to join the large percentage that fail, one or more times, before giving up for good.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find your level, hit your stride, find your metre – whatever metaphor you want to use – and it’ll click into place. You’ll no longer dread the start of a new trading day – you’ll look forward to it. You’ll no longer feel relaxed and calm only when NOT in a trade and stressed and anxious when you are. You’ll find you’re no longer looking for excuses NOT to place that trade (make a cup of tea, make a phone call, walk the dog, go for a run) – you’ll know exactly when and if to place it. You’ll no longer start to tense when your position moves against you – you’ll smile and feel good that that means you’ve just established a lower risk level, or if you’re already in profit, a higher profit level that you’ll come out at if it gets hit again. Far more of your trades will go into positive territory right off the bat and those that don’t will move against you far more quickly and let you know you were wrong without you having to hang on every up tick and down tick for – cheering one and despairing at the other – for an eternity. You’ll no longer stick to your target (an ethereal thing at best) and give back all your profits as it retreats, having reached within a few ticks of the completely arbitrary goal, you’ll let the price action let you know when it’s time to take your profits (or your losses). Each trade setup, entry, management and exit will be in perfect harmony with your system and your own personal psychological needs in relation to trading a system. You’ll be trading the perfect timeframe and the perfect system for your personality and your needs. Until you find a methodology that suits you perfectly you’re just spinning your wheels and likely bleeding capital. If you don’t feel good trading – stop. Right now. ‘Cos it ain’t going to work otherwise.
How do you find this perfectly suited system? There are as many ways as there are bods trying to find a way. Pretty unhelpful.
What’s the point of this post? I’ve just waded through an entire weekends’ worth of the normal “I want a system”, “I’ve got a system and it’ll work for you” and “How do I make Money” posts. All chasing and offering the wrong things. And they’re the wrong things because none of them know YOU or address YOUR needs.
There are an infinite number of combinations of usage of price and volume and time. Such a large set of instruments and markets they may as well be infinite. And the range between the most well informed, highly teched and savvy institutional investor and the most clueless, under-funded, inexperienced and ill-equipped mug punter is so large as to beggar belief. Where do you think you are you on the spectrum? Where do think you REALLY are on that spectrum?
A very small percentage of people make money in trading. The odds of you doing so are miniscule.
Those that are making money are using techniques of such simplicity it would amaze you. In fact, it probably wouldn’t, as you’ve already covered that in your first few months interest and education in trading – and then put it behind you as being too simple to be worth further consideration.
You’ve gone off to pursue the newest and latest fads and techniques and systems and indicators, without realising you already have all you need to make the bare bones of a system that will suit you perfectly. You’re entranced with the prospect of being a Darksider. It’s a fabrication. An attempt to create a sense of asceticism or elitism which does you no favours at all and offers you no advantage, but gives a good laugh to those that think you’re stupid enough to believe that that’s the only way to go. You’re convinced a splay of indicators, or Gann fans, or Elliott waves or Di Jango’s reversal trines will be the ‘solution’. They my or they may not be. You’re convinced that trading a pure VWAP engine with no charts or indicators at all is going to be the only way for you. You feel the raw random noise of the 1 minute chart is the only place to be or the Daily gives you the freedom to be largely relaxed in stops and targets. It makes no difference. There’s no difference in the way you make your money be it with bar charts devoid of any further information or if charts covered to the exclusion of all white space with indicators of all manner, hue and type, or a bare excel style numbers grid. Your profits are made whatever way you make them and no one way is better than any other.
But unless you’re totally in tune with the way you’re trading, you’ll feel uneasy when you’re in a trade and you’ll fear the trade moving against you and you’ll feel varying degrees of pain when it does. Your profits will be fewer and smaller than your losses and you wont have any confidence in what you’re doing and you’ll feel insecure, lacking, a loser and a failure. What to do? Stop. Simply stop. You’re not going to be consistently profitable trading if this is where you’re at.
Go back to basics. Look at the charts, with whatever indicators you want to be using and just LOOK. Simple stuff like lower lows, lower highs or higher lows, higher highs. If you can’t see them – they’re not there. If you can see them –what is that telling you? They’re giving you direction, entry, S&R and exit points. How much more could you ask for?
