Problem with that is it sometimes/often works in raging bullmarket! Of course you should be careful with that one as you already know. You can play "anything" (even ones which are seemingly dumb).. so long as you use a tight stop. Some plays are better than others, of course.
I tend to look at things backwards. When I come up with an idea, I spend more time trying to prove that it doesn't work rather than looking for instances where it did. I've often suggested to new traders that they should spend time studying why traders fail. Learn what not to do. I was just curious what an experienced trader could add to the things that I feel lead to traders not doing as well as they could.
Money/risk management and leverage are the biggest. If a trader makes a lousy trade and starts losing money, but stops out... he isn't hurt too much. Then he makes another bad trade and stops out. Then another. Pretty soon a light goes off in his head, "I'm not doing this right"... and hopefully back to the drawing board without having wiped out his capital.
Good insights! Here's a question for you, how do you look at range? To me, range is a critical part of evaluating whether setup is worth taking or not, the bigger the range, the more of an outlier chart it is, the better the odds of making a successful breakout or retracement trade. What role does range and volatility have in your evaluating tradeworthiness of a chart setup?
What do you consider a lousy or a bad trade? In my opinion a trade that follows your plan and gets stopped out is a good trade with a bad outcome.
Many on ET know I used to be a professional bowler. There was one guy who practiced almost every day in my home house, and someone remarked... "He must be really good. He practices every day". I responded with, "He'll likely never be good because he doesn't practice good technique". Same true with trading. You need to know what trades are good ones and why. Do those. Practice those. A "good trade" is one you know is supposed to work and why.