This question relates to discretionary traders…
Does anyone believe that if you are a skillful trader, you can exploit almost any entry and consistently make money?
How much does the skill of the trader contribute to his ‘edge’, in your opinion?
I’d be interested to know if any successful traders here believe they could make money trading almost any strategy…? :33:
I certainly believe this is possible!
so do I,
its directional
I thought that trading skills is part of the edge? I don’t really understand the question.
Does anyone believe that if you are a skillful trader, you can exploit almost any entry and consistently make money?
I think it’s impossible, people are profitable just by improving their odds using their strategy (mostly experience); it’s impossible to know the future and predict the move thoroughly.
No one trader can be a 100% profitable or a successful trader. If it takes a lot of work and knowledge to be able to get a good trade then we also know that any one mistake can ruin our chances also 
I do believe personally that more exposure and experience will give you an edge over someone who doesn’t have that. Just like a medical resident just finishing their medical school and a doctor with 20 years of experience with specialties. Both are doctors, both can practice medicine but one obviously has more skills, more knowledge and more experience than the other. Going back to the expert making more money with any given system vs the novice using the same system. Have you ever seen the show HOUSE? Think about it that way, every doctor in that hospital has access to same equipment that he does. But he has better ways of deducing the best course of action based on the same information that was available to every other doctor, using the same tools that were available. Sorry for so many medical references just kept my train of though.
Imagine you give a novice trader and an “expert” trader a random trading position every London open. Long/Short in any currency pair available. I would bet that over time the expert would come out ahead in earnings, or at least in smaller losses. This is actually an exercise i heard was used a prop firm.The floor manager would take a 2 hats 1 with an instrument and 1 with a position. You would have to manage the position and the goal was to make the most money from these over the course of 3 months. Sometimes it was just best to close the position immediately and take the small loser, sometimes they could employ other strategies. What it did was build trading flexibility and the ability to do analysis and judge what each individual trader thought was the best course of action. Now i cant say these positions were net profitable but I believe it to be a highly enlightening exercise. I wish i knew the full results but from what i remember the veteran traders did the best, but again its all hearsay. Bottom line: do more experienced traders have an edge “skill wise” over say someone who hasn’t been in the market as long, IMHO. But it also illustrates a way to enhance your own trading skill edge.
You nailed it. Skill is developed after and “edge” is, you still need the system first.
I don’t think that it is possible to make money with almost any entry. More trading skill would probably allow you to lose less than the average trader, but a lot of the skill is knowing when you have an advantage and when you don’t. It would make an interesting reality show…
A novice and a pro get a $10K account for a week. The producers create the exact same entry in each account and each trader gets a text message. Then see who has more in their account at the end of the week.
I personally believe that a skilled trader. i.e. A trader that has his emotions under control, cuts his losses aggressively, and captures bigger winner than losses, is able to trade even the most basic entries.
For example, simply entering into pullbacks, or bounces at range extremes.
These two “edges”, may be considered crude by a lot of beginners, but they are enough to give a skilled trader all he needs to extract money consistently from the market.
This sounds like fun and very interesting to try… on demo of course! Would anyone be interested in setting up a similar experiment on BP forum here? I trade the daily time frame so would have to test it on that time frame but if anyone else would like to be involved let me know and we can set up the thread and see what the results look like after a few weeks or so?
As a successful trader, I can tell you that I use only one strategy, which I found after one year of searching. However, having a good strategy is just 20-30 percent on the way to success. You got to have a good money management plan otherwise the best strategy in the world won’t help you. I win the market 60-65% of the time and the reason I stay green is just because I have a good risk-rewards ratio in my trades. This is the key to win the markets constantly from my point of view…