[SIUYA]

Zdo - a good little paragraph. thanks.
I thought the part just above where you highlighted was particularly apt...

"However, even for highly intelligent people—or perhaps most dangerously for intelligent people, they wish to trade or invest (and in poker too!) in some deterministic universe where the proper course of action is always clear-cut and logical. On the other hand the average person wants to always be right, and desperately seeks a formula that is reliable with an unreasonable degree of accuracy. They spend most of their time seeking new gurus or indicators that will solve their problems, and unfortunately tend to select what has worked best in a regime that is already past its prime. As a consequence, they are always behind the curve, and lose with an incredibly high frequency."

Even when experienced (I have and I assume others have as well at various stages ) fallen into the trap of trying to seek a reliable formula with an unreasonable degree of accuracy......

While continual searching and head banging frustration of challenges can be an enjoyable task for some.....it can also be unnecessary and often detrimental to the process of being profitable maybe.

[TheNegotiator]

A little example today reminded me of this thread. Over in the day-trading-e-mini-futures thread, I made the note that (post #282 diagram) above 1235.75 I felt the E-mini S&P 500 was going to be out of balance. This often leads to a trend. So contextually, I was looking to follow not fade the market today.

The large blue profile is the balance volume from the beginning of August.

[starborg9]

To be prepaired for whatever may come. more than one timeframe is needed.
If one only trades on a 5min chart, what may seem as a trend may be jusr a pullback or a retracement on a 30min timeframe.
If you have both you can trade the trend on the higher one, or if there's no trend you can define the box on it, and scalp on the 5min
between the box high/low using slow stochastics, which was developed specifically for sideway markets when trading came to a
virtual stand-still after the Great Depression (stochs are useless in a trending market).

For newbies, it serves to practise and master one setup first that they can quickly and easily identify, and not get bogged down in complexities
that can confuse, delay, and even paralyze. Been there. Once you achieve confidence using one setup, add another.
Or not, many successful traders have only 1 or 2.

[TheNegotiator]

starborg9, I don't know whether many highly successful traders only have 1 or 2 strategies. I guess it depends how flexible the approach is and whether those strategies give multiple entry types or not.

[bootstrap]

i think that what most do not get is the purpose of trading.
trading is not make a killing, trading is make X consistently.

my goal was and still is to make $300/per day per $50k. In the beginning did i have 50k. no. but i traded as if i did, just scaled down.

newbies and veterans alike get lost in the OMG trade. do they happen, well duh. of course they do. but they are rare and gravy on the top.

the best advice i can give is this... trading = income, investing = wealth. trading is who cares what the trend is, investing is where is the trend.

which are you? there is no wrong or right answer. just stop looking.