Hi Mikkom, this is where I wish I'd have started this a couple of years ago - 9 months is better than nothing, but... This made me think hard about what defines the characteristics of a market when just dealing with time and price. Ignore the ...

Strategy of losers

Nice post Marsh. To be clear, though S/R had an input, when I lost 10 times in a row I was trading on 'instinct'. I was looking at PA (not being much of a PA student obviously), which approximated to "it's going up, follow. It's stalling, reverse." ...

Strategy of losers

Hi Slim, thanks. Don't forget in all this retail is a very small pot; noone's really interested in going after the retail orders apart from retail brokers and they're generally too small to move anything at all interbank level. So it's a bit like ...

Strategy of losers

Oh oh. Not this again. Alderlug, you need to spend a little more time reading, very carefully. Evidence abounds, but noones going to give you a signpost. PS Ferrari - have to buy and sell was the bit I'm stressing. What I mean is that the pressure ...

Strategy of losers

It's the best news anyone can hear. If it's possible to be wrong far more than chance dictates, it's possible to do the reverse. The most dispiriting result is to get roughly half and half. Your idea about traders just squeezing out the others... I ...

Strategy of losers

Better you know it than to write it AZS. Your order of events is scarily familiar, I'm guessing because technicals and fundamentals are presented on a plate so they're the obvious first base, whereas the rest you have to dig around for. If that ...

Strategy of losers

Well certainly not the markets at any rate. What interests me is the distribution - a classic case of Pareto's law, where 20% of the traders take 80% of the money; time and time again.

Strategy of losers

Never in question that Ferrari - the real problem is in saying that most systems are profitable if you only follow them. They most definitely aren't.

Strategy of losers

Great Brent, I'd hoped you still did. I read MoM a while back, and traded for a while with the fin-alg market profile indicator (though I can see why you might ditch that). There's some interesting solid common-sense concepts there and some day I'm ...

Strategy of losers

Oh no! I've opened up my worst nightmare, discussions on our own psychology rather than that of the crowd. In hindsight it was all my fault for raising the P book. It's not new age as some of you are fearing. Trust me, I hate woolly thinking, ...

Strategy of losers

Cracking, great find Brent, thanks. I've been meaning to ask you, do you still use market profile?

Strategy of losers

I know he didn't! I did. That's my take as opposed to his.

Strategy of losers

A bit about discipline, Mark Douglas and instinct Chicky, Porkpie, you picked up on my dislike of TITZ (Trading in the Zone, not tits). It’s because of all the advice I’ve ever read, or followed, this was the most useless. He is so blasé about ...

Strategy of losers

Why are some pairs more profitable than others? Brent, yes advertising for EURUSD must be partly responsible (it’s better than “Come trade the EURUSD, it’s rock hard”, and Porky’s idea of it being a scalpers first choice must have something to do ...

Strategy of losers

Porky: I hear ya – I’ve run a journal for a around a year and half, and I think the post that was me at my lowest trading ebb was around a year ago. To be really clear, I ‘m not qualified to give you advice. Once I earn all my income from trading, ...

Strategy of losers

Conclusions — So, if you’re ever asked why retail traders lose, the accurate answer is they trade with low risk: high reward until frustration or greed gets the better of them, then they scale up and let their losers run. They trade the least ...

Strategy of losers

5) And the rest… — I can prove all of the above, but there are a few more parts of a losing strategy that I can’t prove because I don’t have the data, so take these with a pinch of salt: Retailers I believe vastly underestimate the impact of ...

Strategy of losers

4) Retailers love ranges and don’t trend trade — This may seem to fly in the face of the fact that AUDUSD is the highest profitability and was in a clear trend but it fits in perfectly. AUDUSD was only 15% profitable – that’s 85% of the time ...

Strategy of losers

3) Retail entries/exits are largely made from time & price alone This might seem like a pretty bland observation, but to my mind it’s the most important. I’d go further and say most entries/exits are made from chart patterns. As with all of these ...

Strategy of losers

Really appreciate the feedback from all of you here, thank you. I didn’t mean to leave this thread dangling for quite so long – I was in darkest Cornwall without broadband. Still, I got a 4-hour train journey to write up the rest, so I’ll finish off ...

Strategy of losers