the problem is here that casinos are using unfair odds to beat players in long run and if some rare smart peoples like you found a way to beat the odds then they will block you 
it is true even on sport betting bookies. most of them not tolerate winners.they will limit you and some even close your account. I have over 10+ years of experience in sport betting and Iâm sure that the bet against public is a proven way to make profit in betting.In betting you can easily detect the public view by means of Odds and try to bet on underdogs, but in trading the story is different.betting is a good place to learn about strict money and risk management that also applicable to Trading.
trading against the crowd could be good or bad, it depends what is that crowd include of, if they are normal day traders, trade against them, on the other hand, if they are whales and experts of market, try to go with them or you will be knocked off.
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I think this kind of thinking (about crowds, etc) can get really pointless and overly complicated.
Just think what Tom Hougaard says:
âI could stop trading and still beat 80% of people.â
In other words, you can achieve better results than at least 80% (maybe nearer 95%) just by doing nothing, not trading at all.
So, it really doesnât require a great deal of work to hone your own, individual approach to outperform the âcrowdâ. And no one can look at price and tell you âthese are retail day tradersâ and these are âsmart moneyâ and those are âbank guysâ. Even accurate market-wide volume and open interest figures are not available in a non-centralised marketplace.
Just focus on the price and the chart and your own methodology. Forget what everyone else is doing. TA tells you the end result of the sum of all active participants, whoever they are, as it is reflected in the price movement.
Donât overcomplicate what is a very simple (but not easy) process.
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Itâs not about blindly following the crowd or going against it; itâs about finding your edge within the market and using strategies that suit your risk tolerance and objectives.
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I think it should also be noted that there is a difference between the trend and the crowd.
The crowd in this discussion is the retail traders, but retail traders make up a very small percentage of the money changing hands in the forex market. The retail traders are NOT the cause of the trend. This means you can easily follow this crowd while actually trading against the trend.
The trend is created/fueled by the big dogs. The banks, big trading firms, etc. Entities with billions to trade. Again, not the retail traders.
The retail trader should be like a surfer, looking to ride the wave. He/she doesnât create the wave, just joins it.
The saying is: âThe trend is your friendâ, not: âThe crowd is your friend.â Besides, that doesnât even rhyme. Itâs got to rhyme!
Moral of the story: Be a surfer, not a lemming.
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Well, as good as new traders is relative. Personally I think they are mostly rubbish.
But because they want to make big r:r wins by taking reversals this places all the higher demands on their risk management, which we agree is primitive at best.
New traders select the hardest trading styles, over the most testing time-frames, without a parallel level of risk management skills. The only surprise is that such a large percentage make it.
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Hi. Iâ consider myself a total beginner, so I canât answer. But your question reminded me of a recent webinar in which the teachers were opening a trade on Nasdaq (sorry, Iâm a bit out of context here cause I trade indexes but BabyPips is too useful for me even if I donât trade forex). They were showing us this âtrend is your friendâ thing and they were just explaining that a vast majority of uneducated retail traders regularly go against the trend hoping that theyâll catch the beginning of the reversal. They showed us the real-time market sentiment: the trend was clearly long, no indicator was telling anything about any reversal in the air⌠and the vast, vast majority of traders were short! I remember the teachers saying, desperately: âWhy on earth are all these people opening all these short positions!â. The fact is, IMHO many people simply donât know how to trade, they have no strategy, no plan, no rules so they open a position with no reason but âthis is too long a trend, it will stop and reverse soonâ.
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Absolutely! The rhyme is the key!
How about âWhen the crowdâs begun, the trend is doneâ? 
I guess you mean that you can erroneously follow this crowd? I am still not sure how one is supposed to be able to identify who are the retail traders when we just have price to watch.
Although the institutions have the big money, I donât think we can say that they create the trends. At least the longer trends are driven by economics, govt/central bank policies, international trade, etc.
But certainly the trends are fueled by big money. Price is driven by sentiment and that sentiment believes that price should be somewhere else from where it is ânowâ. But a lot of this sentiment is speculative and short term and not necessarily always in line with the main trend - often it is the response to some individual news event.
We can certainly see the impact of short term speculative trading when we compare a ânormalâ dayâs range with, for example, a US holiday.
I like this, yes, especially since most retail traders are short-term traders where the longer term trend is fairly meaningless compared with whatever is the flavour-for-today"
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thanks to all for participating in discussion and sharing your thoughts. It was very useful and informative for me.I learned great points. 
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That is simply great to hear! 
So what are your conclusions?
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here are only small parts of useful points which I found in comments.surely there are many others. I really enjoyed to read all of them.
"Just focus on the price and the chart and your own methodology. Forget what everyone else is doing. TA tells you the end result of the sum of all active participants, whoever they are, as it is reflected in the price movement.
Donât overcomplicate what is a very simple (but not easy) process."
"You just need to know how to manage your trades, which again, takes you back to education."
"because they want to make big r:r wins by taking reversals this places all the higher demands on their risk management, which we agree is primitive at best.
New traders select the hardest trading styles"
"They were showing us this âtrend is your friendâ thing and they were just explaining that a vast majority of uneducated retail traders regularly go against the trend hoping that theyâll catch the beginning of the reversal. They showed us the real-time market sentiment: the trend was clearly long, no indicator was telling anything about any reversal in the air⌠and the vast, vast majority of traders were short!"
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but as a conclusion I should say that there are different points of view .
- Crowd means retail traders and most of them are not well educated and have clear trading plans and strategies . so they are losers in long run
- new traders mostly trying to use strategies to get quick and big profit and so most of the time they are trading against TRENDS
- Trends are not running by retail traders and crowd but they are form and going ahead by big traders.
- using a well known and popular strategy is differ from using it right. so it is possible that a very popular approach used incorrectly by majority of traders so if you learn to trade and manage it in the right way then you are actually trading against the public and crowd.
at last I prefer to listen to your advice "Donât overcomplicate what is a very simple (but not easy) process."
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Most traders seem to focus just on where to enter a trade as though getting that right is all you need. But in fact it can be the least important item.
One of the most profound and pithy statements I have read recently was made by @tommor on another thread:
âThe entry makes the trade but the exit makes the moneyâ
Where the trade ends (both gains and losses) is the real key to this business and when combined with position size management and equity protection, even making random entries can end up profitable! 
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absolutely true. I think all traders have been experienced good entries and bad exits.
i am agree about this too:
Where the trade ends (both gains and losses) is the real key to this business and when combined with position size management and equity protection, even making random entries can end up profitable!
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In fact, one of the most well-liked and frequently suggested trading approaches is trend following. Although many traders employ it, the degree to which it is successful depends on the traderâs application, discipline, risk management, and a number of other criteria. The mere fact that a tactic is well-liked does not imply that it is useless or headed to failure. A strategyâs effectiveness mostly depends on how it is carried out and the situation it is used in.
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OK, so we have a few claims here that a) exit levels are more important than entries, and b) that position size and money management are critical elements.
But there is one more element that is even more critical, even decisive in terms of success/failure - and that is trader psychology or âmindsetâ. Too often, when a trader is failing they blame the strategy, the market, the smart money, the dumb retail trader crowd, etc - but never themselves. But the answer is so often to be found in the one place we donât want to look into - ourselves.
So letâs do an experiment. We select three traders Fred ,Brent and Colin. (these are all men because women donât make mistakes ). We give them the same equity and the same simple trading strategy where entry is at the close of a candle that crosses 2 EMAâs, Stoploss is 20 pips and Target is 50 pips. And now we follow them through the first three trade set-ups.
TRADE 1: Candle close above EMAâs:
All three traders enter at the same price. The price drifts off by 15 pips, returns to B/E and then rises to hit target. Results:
Fred: Sees price approaching the SL and is only 5 pips away. He decides it would be smart to close out before the SL is inevitably hit and save 5 pips. Result: -15 pips
Brent: Sees price approaching the SL but sits with it in a cold sweat. He is greatly relieved to see the price return to B/E and even a few pips above it. But heâs scared that the price might drop again and would look really silly if he didnât accept this gift to get out with a small profit. Result +3 pips
Colin: Didnât see the early down move, or the subsequent rise. He was walking the dog. Result: +50 pips
TRADE 2: Candle close below EMAâs
All three traders enter at the same price. The price drops down by 7 pips, returns to B/E and then spikes up and hits the stoploss. Results:
Fred: Is still really pissed that he took that loss in the 1st trade and is now deeply frustrated to get stopped out again. The strategy does not look good! Total results: -15 and -20 = -35 pips
Brent: Is a bit sore that he got freaked into an early exit in the last trade and sees the market adding insult to injury by stopping him out. But still sees merit in the strategy as a whole. Total results: +3 and -20 = -17 pips
Colin: Was again out with the dog and on his return saw he was stopped out. He is still rather pleased. He has only a 50/50 win rate but still in profit and the SL had protected his downside. Result: +50 and -20= +30 pips
TRADE 3: Candle close above EMAâs:
All three traders enter at the same price. Price falls to -10, then rises to +42, drops back to +15 and then rises to hit target at +50 pips. Results:
Fred: Fred was worried about his earlier losses and although he would sit through this trade, he would only put on a half position size. Result: ½*50 pips = 25 pips. Total results: -15, -20, +25 = -10 pips
Brent: Sat through the initial drop, was relieved to see price rise to +42 pips and put him back into profit. But then fear sets in and in order to protect his profit he raises his SL to + 17 pips (i,e, overall B/E). He is stopped out. Total results: +3, -20, +17 = 0 pips
Colin: Gets back from walking the dog. Is pleased to see another target hit. Total results: +50, -20, +50 =+80 pips.
OUTCOME?
Fred: Decides the strategy is a complete fake and goes back to YouTube again to find (yet) another new one.
Brent:Thinks the strategy is ok in principle but has too many loopholes so he adds an RSI, MACD, and a Stochastics indicator⌠oh, and a PSAR, just in caseâŚ
Colin: Thinks it is a great strategy and can now increase his position size and still keep the same risk parameters.
Same entries, different mindsets, different outcomes.
MORAL of the story? ⌠Buy a dog!
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thanks a lot for putting time and effort on writing such great posts. It sounds so familiar 
specially Brent
I totally agree again with u about importance of mindset and psychology. the best solution that worked for me was clearing my Exit criteria. to be honest i am not a fan of going out with dog and Colin method
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Ssshhhh!
or are you just afraid of the competition!
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I focus on what the market is done but use the crowd as a reference. For me, I like to keep it simple reading the economic calendar, using the Babypips currency strength meter and other tools in the platform, Myfxbook and DailyFX. As a new trader I shy away from using too many indicators and learn the candlesticks patterns. The two indicators I do occasionally use are the Bollinger Bands, and the RSI.
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you canât bet against the market.
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