I agree and I don’t think dead or others who use charts aren’t making money. What I am saying is that they are lucky and do not have a transferable skills, so saying things like “all you need is a chart to be a successful trader like me” is bullshit.
Based on your description Note: there are barely any trades because stocks don't meet your criteria very often especially in a tiny market like Canada here is what a real source of alpha looks like: Note: lots of trades, consistent outperformance, this is a useful signal and people who know it can extract higher returns (but even then, it's just ONE tool among many).
I agree and disagree.. If they are indeed making money Consistently over time,outperforming whatever appropriate benchmark,they aren't lucky.. Interestingly, if one can truly profit soley from discretionary/charts and MM,that is a transferable/ teachable skill...
Guess you're right I'm just lucky. What stocks showed up? My holding at the moment are BMO, TFII, CTS, POW, & SMU.un All trading on TSX.
this is true yeah i'd agree. except that by definition that's not going to work out. for you to even make sense of the chart, you have to learn about things such as positioning and need some kind of basis that tells you why there's an opportunity present (e.g. "why do you think buying the dip can result in a profit?"). your understanding of positioning can either be fictitious ("rsi moving this way means institutional investors are selling blah blah") or can be rooted in some fact ("13f filings show that oaktree owns 47% of this one share and is trying to exit as it represents more than 10% of their gross fund value"). your assessment of opportunity also can be fictitious (e.g. Elder or some trading room dude) or based on empirical evidence (subsequent returns on stocks with positive time series returns tend to persist, and with frequent rebalancing, outperforms even during declines). All these things add up -- most traders have a mix of fantasy and facts in their mind and when they look at a chart and develop a view, it's going be based upon that. my advice to new traders is to learn as many facts as possible and not stare at a chart because you cannot draw an any insights from it yet.
in fairness, it's the way you are describing your strategy that makes it not work. you have an informal, discretionary process, that incorporates lots of bits of information floating around in your head. it' not a simple rules-based system as you claim. i don't know why you want to claim you have a simple rules-based system lol.
Is it safe to say you are not a derivatives trader?? I appear to be the option guy in the stock den....
Damn!! Here I thought my success was because I followed my rules. I'll agree I bend the rules a bit when a stock is showing a profit but my entry criteria and stops are pretty firm. Not sure what other info is floating around in my subconscious but I adhere to a pretty strict set of rules on entry and position size. I run chart scans. I rarely look at fundaments as they tend to bias my decisions. I look at price and volume. I look at the direction of the overall market by looking at the chart of SPY. As basic as it sounds I try and let my winners run and cut losers short. You didn't tell me what stocks showed up in your back-test. You said there weren't many.