I can live with that.
And so it shouldn’t. A trait of all good traders.
3 Likes
I’m not sure why there is so much emphasis put on naked trading and charts, except that most of the indicators that are ‘offered’ to new traders aren’t worth the time spent to learn to use them as they were intended, and most new traders don’t even bother to do that. They use the MT4 version of MACD set to default settings and then come to the conclusion that indicators aren’t useful. Well, they’re right, in the end. I suppose that’s what people mean when they say, ‘whatever you believe about the market ends up being true’.
Some indicators are truly useful, and even more so if you can code enough to build one to tailor with a system built from the ground up by yourself, in other words one that you intimately understand.
I agree that any successful trader is going to have to discover things on their own, and if they are clever enough to discover something that is not widely known, even better. That’s probably why most veteran traders don’t have time for forums; they are just a temptation to over-share.
However I wouldn’t put myself in the successful trader category yet, so I don’t know that any retail trader is successful. I suspect they exist and are keeping mum. I suspect people like Bob and Lexys and some of the staff who write for BP are also successful but how would we ever know for sure. Does it matter? I think it’s possible so I persist.
1 Like
I can testify to that.[quote=“clemmo, post:25, topic:117027”]
I suspect people like Bob … are also successful
[/quote]
Successful, unfortunately no. I’ve learnt my lessons falling of the horse many, many ties. But I get back on and survive. So I describe myself as a survivor. It will be many years yet before I can enjoy the fruits of my hard labor.
Fantastic hearing your views and all the best to you @clemmo
For now there are two crow with and upside gap outside, I’ll need to go throw some stones at.
3 Likes
[quote=“clemmo, post:25, topic:117027, full:true”]
I’m not sure why there is so much emphasis put on naked trading and charts … They use the MT4 version of MACD set to default settings and then come to the conclusion that indicators aren’t useful. Well, they’re right, in the end. I suppose that’s what people mean when they say, ‘whatever you believe about the market ends up being true’.[/quote]
The main reason for the popularity of “price action” and “naked trading” is that people nowadays want an “off-the -shelf” product that, like buying a car, works by itself, is reliable, is fast off the grid, looks and sounds cool - and with no need to look under the hood or open the manual.
Unfortunately, as we all 100% know, that does not exist in trading models. But still people seek it.
However, people have come to doubt indicators through the wide promotion of their deficiencies such as “lagging” and the observation of the general failure of widely promoted and continually sold models based on them.
But PA is a bit different. You cannot really “productize” PA methods as it depends on the current developments of price. That is both its benefit and its problem. Simply connecting the dots on a naked chart does not produce a winning scenario. One still has to know what is going on “under the hood”, what kind of road we are on and where we are trying to get to,
If someone buys a set of the finest surgeon’s knives off the flea market and reads a few books and watches a few YouTubes, would you let them near your appendix?
The point of this thread was to point out exactly that: That PA is apparently not as simple as it is made out to be because whilst many talk about how they are a “PA trader” there are not many that get as far as actually talking about it from their experiences.
This, at least in my opinion, is precisely the heart of the problem. To be consistent in trading you need to intimately understand how your market works, how you want to approach it, and what you are going to need that will tell you what you need to know, in order to succeed.
I was just this morning reading a BBC article about the Chinese Communist Pary Congress in Beijing and I read one of the thoughts attributed to President Xi Jinping and I thought that really applies to learning trading:
“Life [trading] is like a shirt with buttons where you have to get the first few right or all the rest will be wrong.”
it is no good picking something and “seeing if it works”, then try something else, and them something else, for as long as one has some money left…
You need to ask “what do I need to know about this market in order to do with it what I want to do” - and when you know that then you look for the appropriate tool for that function whether it is an “indicator”, or a PA technique, or a home-made “gadget”.
The main reason is because no one wants to button up someone else’s shirt for them (yeah, yeah, I know there are some shirts that one would certainly like to unbutton). But there is a great willingness amongst “veterans” to help others on their curve - if they are genuine in their learning: People like Viper, Tommor, Clint, to mention just a few.
These people are not giving away trading “systems” or looking for followers, they are just giving from their own experiences.
3 Likes
I still recommend Babypips to every newbie I meet in RL or on Facebook. But yeah, this place seems more quiet than what it was years ago.
2 Likes
I think this is true of several terms in the trading sphere.
Not only “price action” though it’s certainly true of this expression.
Also “scalping”, judging by forum discussions of the term. People at Babypips seem to say “scalping” when they mean nothing more specific than trading with small targets? I’ve even seen the expression “scalping from 4-hour charts” here, whatever that means when it’s at home!
2 Likes
I think it’s a bit strong to say that PA is dead. I use PA to trade, I have a couple of EMAs and RSI on my chart, but they’re really the supporting cast of my case for taking a trade. I start out with a PA setup. One issue is that a lot of people use a bit of a mix of approaches. I consider myself a PA trader, but some would say that because I have RSI and EMAs on my chart then I no longer count.
And to pick up the ‘where are all the PA traders?’ point - there will be a number of reasons for an ebb and flow on any forum, in my view. There aren’t enough of us in here to constitute a meaningful sample to scale up a wider view of the retail trader industry, I expect. As @cndlstckchic said, life can intervene. For my part, we launched two businesses and had two more kids over the duration of my trading career, so some things had to take a back seat and fora were one of them. Then I did come back here and found that it had all changed so much it too a massive (and ongoing) adjustment to decided whether or not I could get myself back into the groove.
So I wouldn’t personally say that PA trading is dead just yet.
Sorry to dig up an old thread - am still reading back in, and struggling to find too many current discursive threads!
ST
2 Likes
PA certainly isn’t dead - it’s the bread and butter, and if not then it should be, of any chart reader. I’d say ‘more fool you’ (not you, Simon) to the people who chose to ignore PA. Each to there own, as always
4 Likes
[quote=“RISKonFX, post:31, topic:117027”]
'more fool you’ to the people who chose to ignore PA. Each to there own, as always [/quote]
or:
PA is right…but the rest of you have the right to be wrong… 
4 Likes