Flippin' coins

Splitlink

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I just read a post by Rathbone_Exile on the new "Gann" thread and, so as not to interrupt that thread, I am posting my thoughts here.

Are you a successful coin flipper?

To get that right, you need to be able to keep tight stops and to allow profits to run. There is no reason for that method not to work and I think that that is what most of us do but, although we dress it up in complicated fashion to make us look good , we will not admit to it. The trouble is that we do not follow through with the "cut losses" part of the deal, neither do we know, quite often, how to maximise our profits, allowing the market to get back what it had lost to us.

I try to trade with the "probabilities" on my side and I hope to bias the trade in my favour and I get some excellent results, but I am wrong too often to allow myself the luxury of letting the trade run into loss while I trip off to the corner shop! This is a form of luck, or coin flipping. Much as I try to avoid calling it that, that is what it is!

As RE, more or less, says, entry is random. Using horizontal lines which can be over shot by 50, or more, points is like hitting a fly with a hammer. My calculated guess is as good as all of those carefully calculated points. What gets us out of trouble is cutting and running guerilla tactics.
 
Do you agree with the random walk in markets hypothesis? If you google random walk, you will see it. What I learned at a trading desk 2 years ago was that we are all just coin flippers like you say. And we can simply hope for the best.
 
Sorry split but I think a trading strategy that used the results of a coin flip to determine trade direction is profitable only due to luck.
 
Sorry split but I think a trading strategy that used the results of a coin flip to determine trade direction is profitable only due to luck.

You are right, it is due to luck but, also, a calculated risk of probabilities.as far as direction is concerned. Coin flipping is a metaphor for most decisions and, in my opinion, entering a trade when it gets to a certain level is a form of that.

I have been shot down before over the use of the word luck. Luck is present in everything that happens in our lives. I try to tell myself that I am being clever but the reality is often different. The posts I read from others about what one trader intends to do when such-and-such level reached and another, who is waiting for wedges, etc. tells me that nothing is certain and, if that is the case, a good dollop of luck must be in the calculatiion. The real success of all this is what one does after the entry has been taken.

Sorry to be a radical.....! :D
 
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