Well, this question has actually got me puzzled. Although it seems like a few of you are actually in industry? In that case, my answers for the number one mistakes made by retail traders are:
Trading their own pot, rather than someone else’s money.
Buying high and selling low. Or vice versa.
Re-reading, yes I absolutely agree. Those two are huge! If I lose my money, I can sleep at relative ease and not necessarily revenge trade but if I lose someone else’s money or the bank’s money, that can’t be said.
And for the second answer, buying high and selling low would make you more money and allow you to move your SL to breakeven quicker than buying low and selling high would.
For my answer to the question, I’d agree that it is over-complicating things with drawing of trend lines, renko and all those fanciful indicators.
I think you misunderstood my post. I was talking about trading their own money as being a mistake. Now I’m not saying take a loan from the bank or reverse-mortgage your house. But if I am trading for a firm or some private investors, as long as the legal jargon is all correct I would be completely insulated from any losses which may occur. That is much preferable to putting one’s own capital on the line.
Also, by buying high and selling low I meant closing a position at a net loss. What do good little investors do when the S&P 500 dips? They buy more and lower their cost basis. Well, unless they’re leveraged up to their eyeballs. Then they get quite a beating.
Trading my own pot is much more relaxing than having to worry about losing a lot of someone else’s money. (although I do trade several accounts for others, just not a banking scenario)
Sometimes buying high or selling low is the right thing to do.
The answer was succinctly spelled out by Double6.
The ‘KISS’ acronym comes to mind 
Goodness, was it a full moon last night?
I think perhaps I should swap the daisies for prozac.
What do you think?
One thing is strikingly obvious though. Master Tang sure can absorb, assimilate & process information correctly!
Recommending newbies ask 2 pertinent questions before allocating valuable time & effort sure has caused a few ripples though huh?
Shall we do it all again next week? 
Only if you pay for some heavy duty personal protection.
I don’t much fancy my chances strolling around here next week alongside you without a gaggle of menacing looking bruisers in close proximity.
I had to cycle in today with a hoodie pulled over my head & you know how much I hate hoodies!
It even elicited a drug dealer joke from old Frank on the reception desk.
You’re fast becoming a liability buddy boy.
You’re not kidding. But at least it’s out there now & folks can either choose to use them as a filter or not.
The smart ones will utilize them to weed out the timewasters & jawboners & the rest will continue to trudge from one thread to another eventually meeting themselves coming back the other way.
That’s just the nature of how these forums operate. Some folks make such a song & dance about the most simple, logical suggestions. It’s no different in any other area of life to be honest.
Like Master Tang said, you can lead a horse to water…
But essentially, that is a sound & solid recommendation guys & there will be one or two participants very thankful for having those questions tucked in their back pocket going forward.
That makes sense Peter. Can’t really argue with that can you.
I was just being inquisitive & curious when asking those questions. I’m not really chasing specific pointers or direct advice & to be honest there really isn’t anything out there that folks can adopt that hasn’t already been utilized.
Thank you. That’s pretty straight down the line & unambiguous.
So no reversal, pattern entries or candle/bar formations?
You’ve said you’d drop moving averages, so would that also include utilizing any additional indicator based confirmations, trend lines/channels, support & resistance or the flavour-of-the-moment option of supply & demand?
And yes, Andy Perry’s basic structure was foremost in my mind when I asked that question simply because it’s a very simple & logical concept to wrap one’s head around & more importantly it can be engineered & managed across any timeframe or combination of choice.
Not for me no.
I already know that if I was to pitch up tomorrow with my own betting pot, based on my filtering criteria & reward-to-effort meter, cleanly defined breakout/pullback set ups of continuation moves would pay me the keenest dividend for the time delegated.
I would have access & exposure to a variety of asset classes including forex, futures, commodities, shares, indices etc. I would also have a screening filter program in place to provide me with alerts to investigate, identify & confirm whether or not the instrument offered me a potentially viable bet.
When it did, all I’d have to do is size that bet (adding appropriately if the conditions dictate) ensuring it continues to work efficiently until it gets killed.
The object of the exercise is to work smarter not harder & if my logs show me I’m achieving my bottom line specializing in a set up geared to specific conditions criteria then I’d be a happy bunny.
If your research informs you that trading reversals offers you positive reward-to-effort results then you’re good to go. But in order to identify & confirm that expectancy you’ll first need to define what constitutes a reversal & from what technical conditions it favours, & then ensure it works efficiently enough in the specific market conditions you intend to trade it under often enough to pull a profit out of the game to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Once again, knowing what I know & from the research/development logs that have been produced by far smarter minds than me, I personally wouldn’t include any of the above as part of my filtering or screening criteria for betting breakout/pullback momentum continuation shifts.
But again, my disclaimer is you would need to satisfy yourself that any or all of that stuff would offer you a positive expectancy profile.
It’s all good fun!
I have to agree with you Saul. Studying Andy’s thread should be part of the basic trading of every rookie trader. 
As you start to develop a solid working knowledge of the multi-time-frame / triple screen concepts presented on Andy’s thread, you also start to realize you can use this multi-time-frame style of trading with whatever time frame fits your schedule. And whatever type of tech analysis floats your boat.
Whether you’re looking to scalp the 1-minute, swing trade the daily bars or any time frame between, the multi-time-frame approach seems to be the path of least resistance for the DIY retail trader.
Yes d-pip i need no convincing of the merits of Mr Perry’s contribution to the forum. It’s a fabulous little template.
Dan’s submissions has got me thinking about how i plot my levels & what types of technical information i pay attention to, which i must admit are based on the usual diet of analysis sourced from around the network.
I’ve never really considered widening my field of vision to other asset instruments or prioritising a specific set up to engage the market, but the more i digest & cogitate the information the more it kind of makes sense.
I can certainly relate to the workload entailed in exploring & developing a basket of possible set ups & triggers.
I think most people, me included, pay more attention to the tools than i do the part of the jigsaw i’m supposed to using those tools on.
Hmmm, interesting viewpoint you cast Mr Catlin.
I wish i had access to your research & testing data!!
Man that must be a terrific time saver & confidence builder.
It is what it is & you work with what you have at your disposal at the time.
At the end of the day it’s all about identifying & exploiting your opponents weak or stress points. If you understand what game you’re playing & who your opponents are you can work with that quite adequately. Your opponents are creatures of habit & their behavior traits are well entrenched. Those habits leave footprints that can be exploited.
Apparently, most retail shops now possess in-house sentiment gauges & you’ll probably unearth one or two generic gauges out there that will offer you a snap shot of where your opponents are positioned.
I don’t know if things are any different than they were a few years ago, but historically retail is usually out of step with short-medium term directional flow.
So if momentum is pitched short on EURUSD printing lower highs & lows on your preferred timeframe reference, you can usually bet at least +50% of orders at your shop will be positioned long & usually increase the further south price travels.
It’s not too difficult therefore to locate the next likely area where their liquidation orders (or maximum pain) are residing. If dominant momentum continues south then you get to see how stressful these areas really are & human nature being what it is the fear/greed pendulum will get amplified as these areas come into play, occasionally eliciting panic which forces your opponent (the losing trader) to liquidate en-masse, adding fuel to the momentum kick.
It’s a constant game of probing & testing.
You’re seeking to probe for your opponents weak spots & using directional flow to expose the highest degree of market risk is one such means of exposing that repetitive cycle.
Identify, probe, execute, test…one solidly researched set up applied across multiple asset classes betting a consistently repetitive market phase influenced by shifting order flow will offer a plentiful supply of high probability opportunities.
There should be no need to add or include anything else to your game plan.
I’ve re-read the responses I’ve received here many times. Dancat, double6, compact… Your responses were quite valuable and have inspired me to give trading another shot and from a new perspective.
I have found these threads, which you and your cohorts (for lack of a better word) seemed to be fairly active in at one point. Was one of these what you were speaking of?
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/29902-technical-templates-continued.html
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/6580-3-ducks-trading-system.html
How do you define momentum? As in the current swing, or the overall trend?
I am glad to hear that you are giving it another try…
I agree what they have said on here about to “Keep It Simple” trading strategy. To those who are just starting out, this might not mean anything to them. When starting out, you don’t know what it is you are doing and you have to almost need to try every strategy you can find out there. Until you finally " get it" with so many trial and error. There are times that you think you are a S/R guy or a pattern type of guy or maybe a algorithm guy or a fundamental guy or a combination of all. You don’t know that yet when you still trying to figure things out.
Keep it simple strategy takes time and experience to know what it is and how can you make your strategy works and simple enough that you can use it over and over… And over without fail ( hopefully)…
Good-luck everyone…
I’m not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing Roger
But how will your fresh perspective differ from your previous one based on the collective responses?
I was referring to the [U]concept[/U] & logical [U]structure[/U] of 3 Ducks.
Current directional pressure, bias or trend - however you wish to describe or refer to it.
Current, meaning for however long you intend to engage with the market for in order to achieve that [U]specific objective.[/U]
I think it’s neutral. Good results could possibly come, and I could not really end up worse off.
Before I did a lot of stupid things, like thinking I know when the trend will end. Now I feel I am beginning to see who my opponents really are, how they act, and how to anticipate them when I look at a chart.
I just took 100 “trades” using the MT4 Simulator, EUR/USD Daily chart. Just going with the flow of the market rather than fighting it, and planning logical entries and exits. I ended up with a total return of 20R. Not a significant sample size by any means but it convinced me that the general message you were conveying could have some merit. More testing is needed.
Understood.
Got it, that’s what I figured. Thanks for clarifying.
That’s a very common, repetitive mistake most of your opponents make virtually all of the time, along with trying to pick & jump all over the supposed beginning of trends & biases.
Just take a look at the current scenario on eurjpy to confirm that observation.
During last Thursday & Friday, our stats (along with a couple of other high profile retail brokers) reveal a noticeable decline or paring of longs in that instrument over & above most other pairs, followed by clumps of fresh short orders accumulating, especially through Monday & not unsurprisingly, Tuesday’s business hours too.
A quick check across the publicly accessible retail sentiment indexes confirmed (& continues to) an uptick in shorts v/s longs on that pair, up to 70% skew in one example.
So, virtually two thirds of current live orders were/are stacked short through 142.50 & change, yet prices have simply picked up where they left off & resumed their core directional bias, chewing through their stop loss orders in the meantime.
Even this morning they’re continuing to load shorts into eurjpy. It really is astounding how persistently stupid most of your opponents are.
If I were you I’d expend a lot less of your time & energy on worthless technical & fundamental analysis & increase your efforts in identifying the repetitive frailties & psychological weaknesses of your opponents, because they really aren’t very difficult to identify at all & that particular effort is the one that will bring you the most consistent & valuable rewards!
EJ RHS ATM
heh, hard to resist the occasional peek at the old stomping grounds.
Great post. Thanks for the thorough analysis and recommendations.
And whilst euro/yen tacks on another 100 pips from where it was when you posted this info, the short bias positioning has actually increased slightly on yesterday’s percentages.
It truly does beggar belief.
Do your internal statistics also confirm an increasing trend in shorts building up on this pair double 6?
Although I’ve perused this information before, I’ve never really used it in any definitive sense when matching it up with trending moves. But you can bet which data set I’ll be hauling up first before looking at anything else from now on, especially when prices are in pullback mode within the context of a trending leg!
This is the second item of info directly I’ve benefited from you guys posting recently.
I wish you’d be more active on here because the tiny morsels you throw out sure trumps most of the rubbish served up on here.