Re - where is the grail?

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jonnyfutures

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Hey Peeps

Tried it all, every indicator, every system, every EA, multiple t/f, nothing works. Just keep losing money. Can someone teach me how to trade as I am thick as pig5hit and everyone I meet is telling me they are doing well.

all help appreciated.

jonny
 
Rather than tell you exactly what you need to know right off the bat, here are some pointers:

- Have you noticed any type of market, instrument, or time frame that you seem to prefer? Despite your attempts to try anything else, do you keep returning to these tools?

- Stick to demo or very small stakes. You will want your trading lessons to be as cheap as can be.

- The chart is king. All you need to know is on the chart (and the Depth of Market, level II quotes, time & sales, etc.). Only add indicators you find genuinely useful.

- Keep a log of all your trades. You must identify what your "edge" is in the market, and the way to do so is to identify what you are doing right, and what you are doing wrong. Perhaps you have a natural aptitude with certain types of trades, markets, or times of day. Your job is to find out what these are.

You need to start over from scratch and build yourself a methodology and market view that will ultimately make you profitable. First identifying characteristics you find fun, intuitive, or easy to work with is where to start. Then you need experience getting in tune with your market.

Finally, a couple things to look over and think about:

1) Do you really want to do this? Is trading for you? Can you cope with the uncertainty and experiential nature of trading, and that each trade you take can (and will at least once) fail? You might have to face your inner demons, if any. Trading is not easy to get into.

2) What is the market at its most fundamental level? Why does price move? What is liquidity?

3) When searching for a profitable trade, what is it exactly that you should be looking for? Why is it that at the moment you enter any trade in any market, that price should go your way?

4) I am selling the rest of this information in the form of DVDs at the low, low price of $499.99 each. Are you willing to pay for these? (The answer is yes. ;) )
 
Pro-tip: paying someone for the info you need is a double-edged sword. The reasons for this are numerous:

1) The ratio of Scammer:Legit is very difficult to assess.

2) Most legit info can be gotten from reading a couple books.

3) Beware of wanting to pay because you are frustrated. This is exactly what a seller of systems/material wants in a buyer. Do yourself a favour and refrain from purchasing anything until you can tell what has value and what does not.

All you need to realize is that trading is a research- and practice-intensive activity. Once you tune in to the way your market of choice moves, it's all about profiting from the moves you believe have a high probability of profit while being very attuned to your psychology. The greatest enemy in the market is no one else but you.

Good luck!
 
jonnyfutures said:
Hey Peeps

Tried it all, every indicator, every system, every EA, multiple t/f, nothing works. Just keep losing money. Can someone teach me how to trade as I am thick as pig5hit and everyone I meet is telling me they are doing well.

all help appreciated.

jonny
Click to expand...

You need to find a good vendor. They love making people rich.

Baghdad or Stanzione in particular have very good reputations.
 
jonnyfutures said:
Hey Peeps

Tried it all, every indicator, every system, every EA, multiple t/f, nothing works. Just keep losing money. Can someone teach me how to trade as I am thick as pig5hit and everyone I meet is telling me they are doing well.

all help appreciated.

jonny
Click to expand...

Here's the grail, for free: quit trying to predict direction. It can't be done profitably, consistently. It can't be done based on charts, fundamentals, logs (logs? surely you jest, VielGeld) "quant" bunk or anything else. Which is not to say trend following can't be very profitable
 
Oh, whoops, my bad!

Scratch everything I said. There's a guy I know who's pretty reclusive. He keeps to the mountains of Kansas, mostly, and is pretty difficult to reach.

What sets him apart is that he studied with the mystical monks of the Orient, and is said to communicate telepathically with the internet for his trades. Comcast has attempted to employ ex-KGB to raid his cave for telecom secrets, to no avail. But I digress. His execution fill is second to none.

Whenever he deigns to give us a drop of his wisdom, he goes by the name of [NAME REMOVED]. You might catch him once in a while, but he's a mighty rare sight whatever the case. If you want a sure-fire summon, it'll set you back a cool $10k, but I can guarantee you it's worth it!
 
VielGeld said:
Oh, whoops, my bad!

Scratch everything I said. There's a guy I know who's pretty reclusive. He keeps to the mountains of Kansas, mostly, and is pretty difficult to reach.

What sets him apart is that he studied with the mystical monks of the Orient, and is said to communicate telepathically with the internet for his trades. Comcast has attempted to employ ex-KGB to raid his cave for telecom secrets, to no avail. But I digress. His execution fill is second to none.

Whenever he deigns to give us a drop of his wisdom, he goes by the name of [NAME REMOVED]. You might catch him once in a while, but he's a mighty rare sight whatever the case. If you want a sure-fire summon, it'll set you back a cool $10k, but I can guarantee you it's worth it!
Click to expand...

I'm confused. You've traded for less than a year and you're telling this guy to keep a log? And then you write this thing that's supposed to be witty but makes no sense? Please explain:whistling
 
jonnyfutures said:
I can see you have thought about your answer and i thank you for that. I will gladly pay someone for the answer to my questions, we all know the grail doesn't exist so i am looking for a smaller grail to start with.
Click to expand...

What makes you think you don't already have the grail?

There was a recent post by a guru here who, after the price of Gold moved up $47, he shorted it at the high - almost to the tick!

Is that what you are looking for?

Or would you consider being the person that kept going long as it moved up $47?

I have to say that I very rarely have hero trades. I did spend a long time picking tops. I spent a long time watching markets go down, waiting for the time I thought it was going to stop going down and start to move up.

Then one day I asked myself, whilst doing this.... "Why am I not going short". True story.

What are you looking for and why do you think you don't have it?
 
VielGeld said:
Pro-tip: paying someone for the info you need is a double-edged sword. The reasons for this are numerous:

1) The ratio of Scammer:Legit is very difficult to assess.

2) Most legit info can be gotten from reading a couple books.

3) Beware of wanting to pay because you are frustrated. This is exactly what a seller of systems/material wants in a buyer. Do yourself a favour and refrain from purchasing anything until you can tell what has value and what does not.

All you need to realize is that trading is a research- and practice-intensive activity. Once you tune in to the way your market of choice moves, it's all about profiting from the moves you believe have a high probability of profit while being very attuned to your psychology. The greatest enemy in the market is no one else but you.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

A number of times on this site, you have mentioned that all the legit info is in books.

You also mentioned that you didn't get anything from books but had a mentor.

My experience is that books were completely useless.

Can you actually name these books so that Johnny can get on with it? Also, can you say why you are so confident in these books, considering you had a mentor?
 
The most you can get from books is the psychological component, risk management, money management, and a couple trade ideas. The actual work of understanding the market is something you either find out on your own or get told. I've yet to find anything about market structure in books.

There is some useful stuff to be found in books, but as far as I've seen you just won't find the real "meat" of trading in them.

Anyway, I meant most legit info can be found in books in the sense that what most "legit vendors" will sell you is stuff you can just read about -- which may or may not be useful. What they sell might be true, but it doesn't mean you can't get it cheaper.
 
So there is no specific book you can name?

Just tell us the name of the specific books & what you got from each.
 
Lol, at best I've learned just a little bit about trading from every book... I believe I made a list somewhere on this site...

'k, DT wants books. Here we go:


VielGeld said:
[In reference to being asked to list the books I've read]

Oh la là. That might be a bit hard. I'm a voracious reader and read something like 50 books in the past year on trading alone.

But as for books I specifically own (i.e. not alternatively acquired since those number in the 400+), I can manage a rough list off the top of my head:

- West of Wall Street by George Angell & Barry Haig
- How I Trade for a Living by Gary Smith
- The Education of a Speculator by Victor Niederhoffer
- Pit Bull by Martin Schwarz
- All 3 Market Wizard books by Jack Schwager

- Options Volatility Trading by Adam Warner
- Options as a Strategic Investment by McMillan
- [2-3 more beginner books on options]

- Technical Analysis by Charles D. Kirkpatrick
- The Intelligent Investor by Graham
- All About Market Indicators
- [2-3 more books on investing for the N00b -- haven't really gotten into these]

- Diary of a Very Bad Year by N+1
- More Money than God by Sebastian Mallaby
- [2-3 more economics books if those count]
- [More classroom finance textbooks. Some have been useful, most not. I especially recommend International Finance by Piet Sercu. Good writing style, not afraid to inject humour in a Uni textbook, and very informative on how markets work]

I have read the majority of them, though I'm finishing up on Education of a Speculator and still have 2-3 more only half-read.

Ok, I guess I'll go for the whole list while I'm at it. Grab a cup of Joe. The following come from my "stash":

- Enhancing Trader Performance by Brett Steenbarger (& anything else by this guy)
- Trading for a Living by Alexander Elder
- Trading to Win by Ari Kiev
- Trade your Way to Financial Freedom by Van k. Tharp

- Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator by You Know Who

- The Options Trading Course by George Fontanills
- Option Volatility & Pricing by Sheldon Natenberg

- Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Magee
- John Bollinger on Bollinger Bands
- How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O'Neil

- Create Your own Hedge Fund by Mark D. Wolfinger

- Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns by Thomas N. Bulkowski
- Stock Trader Almanac (2005)

- Street Smarts - Linda B. Raschke
- TurtleRules.pdf (free pdf given out by a Turtle that gives out their method. Interesting, but useless)
- Pdfs by "Day Trading University", which seems to have been a newsletter of sorts from around 1999. The Nasdaq was scary back then!

- The Geometry of Stock Market Profits by Micheal S. Jenkins

- [Couple extra Academic papers and journal/magazine clips or short texts on strats and stuff]

So, pretty much all the staples. Only sort of books I haven't read are on Forex, I think. I can't honestly say I've read everything in here 100%, but these are at least the books I've put time into seriously reading.

Err... I could be missing a couple, but I'm not sure that matters much. :LOL:
Click to expand...

Happy? I've added an extra half dozen books since this post, too. :)

What'd I get from each? Well, each one told me a small thing about trading. It broadened my view just a little bit. The useful ones (to me) have been:

Reminiscences -- For the psychology. Spot on.
Education of a Speculator -- Entertaining, informative, and Vic's view of the market.
How I Trade for a Living -- Mostly for sentimental reasons as it was the first book on trading I'd read.
Enhancing Trader Performance -- A way to think about your daily trading practice.
Trading in the Zone -- For the psychology.
The Market Wizard series -- Made me realize that trading might just be a creative endeavour and it all comes down to your style. Plus, it's entertaining.

Actually, now that I think about it, most of the Risk & Money management stuff I all found alone from various sites and forums. I'm currently reading Red-Blooded risk by Aaron Brown, which has been recommended around these parts, and it makes a decent exposure on how to think about risk. Good stuff.

But now that I think about it, Street Smarts by Linda Raschke might be worth a look to again. She details many of her trades in there, so I might be able to understand them now.

Anyway, that's a rough list and nothing exhaustive. I haven't really categorized my collection yet.
 
OK - now we are getting somewhere. Although, none of those books will help you learn how to trade. What they will teach you is 'stuff'. Stuff that bears no relationship with how to trade in the real world.

For instance, I have Steve Nisons candlestick book. I learnt a lot about candlesticks but nothing about trading. It's value in my development as a trader was zero. I have most of the books you mentioned too.

The ones on your list which are to be avoided like the plague are:

- Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Magee
- John Bollinger on Bollinger Bands
- How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O'Neil
- Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns by Thomas N. Bulkowski
- The Geometry of Stock Market Profits by Micheal S. Jenkins

These books & others of their ilk will merely put stuff in your head that will then need to be removed in order for you to be able to trade.

You don't need to broaden your view in trading. When you start out at trading, it's natural to try to learn as much as possible. At some point, this becomes the very thing that prevents you from progressing.

The problem is, people think trading is a problem with a solution, so they keep looking for ways to tweak the solution.

In face, trading is a skill. You need some basic knowledge, then you need to stick with something and get better at it. If you keep trying to add in more ingredients, you effectively go back to zero on the skill development side.

There is one book that will help to understand the nature of the game. It is called "The Nature of Risk" by J Mamis. The theme of the book is how confirmation erodes profits. That the more confirmation you look for to get into a trade, the less money you will make from it.

Once that sinks in, if you believe what he says, then the next logical step is to stop looking at building a solution to the trading problem which is what most of the books you named are about. You have to become more skilled.
 
I very much agree with your list of "must avoid", but I'd still tell someone to give them a shot, hands firmly in a batch of salt. And that last one -- Geometry -- actually the second book I'd read, I would probably call mandatory reading if only to see how absurd the trading game can get. It's entertaining in its own right.

What I think you end up getting from reading widely is that you're dealing with an experiential environment. You get a variety of exposures, decide what you like, and try it out. Trial and error all the way.

And thanks for the rec. I'll check it out!

Despite books not providing anything useful related to trading, they can offer different, interesting perpectives of the game. I don't think I'll ever stop collecting books about it.
 
jonnyfutures said:
I am looking for a way to make a profit every day talking around 10 trades per day. Whatever I need I currently dont have as I am a looser.
Click to expand...

Loosing is a very common problem here.

There is no grail.

So, with that in mind - why not tell people what it is you are doing that is all the loosing? What is your current method?

BTW - if you trade directionally, you have to pick a direction you think price will move. This is a prediction.
 
DionysusToast said:
What makes you think you don't already have the grail?
Click to expand...

convo launch pad......

JF, you require two basic instruments to begin, to end: the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere ....all other things are just the stuff you reach for when you feel insecure....and you feel the most insecure with insufficient knowledge and you know when you have insufficient knowledge when one of your hemispheres reaches for permission from something external to current price....pay for decent knowledge from someone who can trade live in front of you with their own money.....there is a direct correlation to the amount of dollars you spend on education in this way versus the amount of time fluffing around in the guess-pit of chat sites.....

should be pretty clear who can provide that education on T2W if anywhere......
 
jonnyfutures said:
I have heard this so many times its a wind up. Surely to trade profitably you must have found a solution of sorts. shirley there is a right way and a wrong way.
Click to expand...

Quite true, my explanation was poor. OK - by solution, I mean 'mechanical solution'.

A set of rules that can be applied, without thought from now until infinity. This set of rules has a 'probability expectation' which when combined with a Risk:Reward ratio will supply a profit if applied over time.

In other words, you do your thinking when you look for this solution BUT a monkey could apply it.

It is non-discretionary, mechanical trading and the goal of most retailers and forum posters.

The goal after that is to write a computer program to do the trading automatically.

The alternative is to commit to having to use your brain when you take trades as opposed to during some research phase.
 
DionysusToast said:
The ones on your list which are to be avoided like the plague are:

- Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Magee
- John Bollinger on Bollinger Bands
- How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O'Neil
- Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns by Thomas N. Bulkowski
- The Geometry of Stock Market Profits by Micheal S. Jenkins
Click to expand...

You not fan of Magee? I thought if you were going to read any book this one has a fair amount of useful info. Breakouts of triangles were working for him and still do, imo, if you have the patience to wait for them.
 
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