What was your experience like in finding a trading strategy that fits your personality? How long did it take?
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It took me 8 months to realise I had to take it seriously and follow the process properly. My win ratio is 64% so I have leeway where I place my T/P.
Most traders fail because they donāt have a tried and tested method, and if they do they donāt follow it.
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About a year and a half.
After learning about price movements and the various ways to spot setups it took me probably a further 9 months of testing to settle on something I found comfortable and easy to stick to.
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Iām 1 year and almost a month into this journey, I still yet havenāt complied a strategy for my personality. Now I work part time, so if I was able to do trading full time, then the 1 year would of been reduced. The reason itās taking me this long is because, Iām compiling the strategies Iāve learnt from various traders to one thing. Doing this will require tremendous comprehension of each individual one. Of course I can stick to one, but like a boxer, I like to hit my opponent with various combos and punches.
About 2 years. At first I thought to make money trading you had to be very discretionary, failing miserably. It wasnāt until I heard about Mark Douglas and heard him talk about systematic trading and the law of probabilities that I finally built my own systematic strategy with about a 63% win ratio. Mark changed everything for me! May he rest in peace.
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Hey! Thatās a pretty big edge, any indicator you recommend looking into?
Hey, is this information found in āTrading in the Zoneā? Iām currently listening to the audiobook.
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Yes! Also trading in the zone workshop videos on YouTube. 4 part series. As far as indicators, what I personally use is support and resistance levels, and some MAs used as support and resistance levels. Congruence with a higher timeframe works great as well.
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This is a very tricky and important question, itās almost like there is always something new to develop as you continue your trades. This means adaptability and consistency, always be ready to improve and learn.
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Ah yeah, I bumped into those videos while looking at one of the interviews they did with him. Thanks for taking the time to reply, I will look into it 
Haha still a work in progress. I think jumping around too much and not giving a strategy enough focus.
But Iām working on.
Always started.with daily strategies, but Iām thinking maybe I need a strategy on a lower time frame.
Or maybe Iām just impatient!
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My initial strategy used a few indicators and it worked well, but I have since changed to a simple support/resistance strategy (about 16 months ago) and this works great for me. I have pending trades set up which removes any emotional trading (something very important for me!). If it doesnāt hit that value, the trade doesnāt go on. With my previous strategy I was guilty of putting the trade on when it was ānearlyā there (usually because of FOMO), only to have it reverse, resulting in a loss, and of course the trade shouldnāt have been there! Pending trades has been a game changer for me.
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Can I ask about your exits when i profit? how do you handle these?
I have take profit set up, also using support/resistance. Another pending trade set up where the take profit is. When a trade closes, I put that back on as a pending trade for when the market moves back that way. I guess itās a bit like having a bot, but I just do it manually.
@ProfTrader911 please can you send a link to these YouTube workshops by Mark Douglas which you mentioned?
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Iāve been learning about trading for a year now and so far Iāve tried at least 3 strategies.
The GMMA, Stochastic + ADX, RSI +ADX and currently Iām learning how to trade with the trendline strategy. Itās been a challenging but fun experience as Iāve lost some funds and gained just a little but I know itās worth it.
I usually just try out any good strategies I learn from babypips or any other trading forum for some weeks while garnering more knowledge.
It took me 1.5 years to truly get to know my trading personality and building a strategy around it. It took me a while to accept my flaws and find a way to deal with them.
Unless you are a computer algorithm coded to calculate probabilities based on 100s of variables (which you arenāt), every mechanical strategy out there is a net loser (not quite true, but more or less). It is the traderās ability to know when and where to implement the strategy that is key, and that takes thousands of hours of screen time.
Keep it simple.
Price structure, trend, and momentum, with volume profiling as a little icing on the cake is the way that I do it, combined with thousands of hours of exposure to how the market behaves.
Donāt think you can go relying on any given indicator buy/sell signal. You canāt.
And donāt think there is any āThe Strategyā¢ā out there, with a defined set of rules of engagement, that will keep you in the green so long as you āstick to the planā. There isnāt.
A strategy is like a tool. For most jobs, a hammer is no good, but when it comes to knocking nails into timber, it does the job very well. Same thing with a trading strategy.
Every trade is different. It really is just about getting a feel for āthe probableā, and then applying the correct ātoolā or strategy.
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It took me about 2 years to realise that I required many different trading strategies to use with differing markets that I traded (Forex, Commodities and Metals).
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