@tommor So true! Instead of looking for an entry to join the trend, I would enter, counter-trend after counter-trend, trying to anticipate the reversal. WRONG! Then one day I came up with a rule, “trade what you see”. If it’s trending up, it’s longs, baby, and it’s longs until I’m wrong…and then it’s shorts…until I’m wrong.
3 Likes
Well done @GlennAgnew. Trend is the only pattern in which you can keep adding without even increasing your risk exposure.
A trade decision isn’t binary - right or wrong. It’s about how right you are when you are right and how wrong you are when you are wrong.
1 Like
@SemperExpeto:
“People want results, not the work or time it took to get the results.” … sounds like my ex LoL.
2 Likes
Would you please explain more? how is that possible to increase volume and not risk?
1 Like
It’s a simple tactic. When your original position reaches profit equal to the initial risk, move the stop-loss to break-even and add another position of equal size, stop-loss distance same as the first position.
Total exposure, and therefore profit, is now 2x what it was but risk has not increased. Additional position can alternatively be added on new entry signals, a more conservative approach.
1 Like
Why people fail is part strategy and part psychology.
“Develop a long-term mindset to help achieve short-term goals”.
This means looking at the bigger picture to improve your chances of a better, short-term outcome in trading.
Try a strategy using R:R 1:1 instead of 1:2 or 1:3. Look at the longer term trend for direction, and most importantly, have the patience to let it play out.
2 Likes
In the financial markets you have a 92% probability of loss 92% of the time, making the intersection of profits 0.64% with a breakeven at 8%, in the past you could make profits towards 8%, today you can’t.
The human race is designed to want more, doing that in the markets will induce a loss of profits and often capital, combine that with the intersection and you have basically the entire reason everyone fails.
Well plus people have such low expectations they can never strive to achieve what the markets define as ‘winning’, I just logged in to a crypto system which we don’t use and turns out it made a staggering percent profit this month.
Some people wanted to use it for signals and via their own bots, but everyone puts such burdens on anything that works (they always want more), that invariably I have more interest running my own accounts than helping them, so I didn’t 
I think its because backtesting to find a long term profitable strategy does take a lot of work and hours and hours to figure out. Win rate, RR, clear defined stratey all of that has to be backtested and proven to work even through the worst months. There’s a lot of people with good strategies that work amazing certain months but then completely bomb other months, have a large drawdown and then cause people to freak out. Every strategy has its losses but to find one that is consistent through all the market changes and seasons is what is hard, takes a ton of effort to find and refine, and has to fit the person’s lifestyle as well (entry times and such). Most people do not find their winning strategy right away so people who are not persistent and don’t want it bad enough will fail.
3 Likes
I can attest to this as well. So many times I tried to trade a reversal because I felt it looked like it was going to turn around, only to watch the trend continue. Worst part is, I wasn’t using any actual strategy, just “Oh, It looks like it’s going to reverse because… uh… well, just because”. And then when I lost the trade I’d look at it and say, WHAT THE HELL??? Why did you do that AGAIN!!!
Not saying there aren’t successful breakout/reversal traders, but it requires an actual setup.
And there’s a reason why one of the most popular sayings in trading is: “The trend is your friend.”
2 Likes
Added it to my shopping list on Amazon. Ty.
It only every becomes true failure when you quit trying. Up until the point you give up, it was learning. There’s a great story about giving up too early, from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I’ll recount it here as I remember it, though some of the details may be a bit off. It’s a good read if you want to, and I’ll add that link below.
A man named Darby, back in the gold rush days, decided he was going to strike it rich mining for gold as well, so he went to all his friends and family and borrowed a lot of money to go out west, start a mine and dig for gold. He got out to what I assume was California and had all his equipment and started digging with some employees/friends. They did this for awhile, never finding gold. And it was a good while. Finally, Darby gave up, sold all his equipment for much less than he paid and headed back home with his head hung low.
But the junk man he sold that equipment to hired a mining engineer who went out, surveyed it and told the the junkman where to dig and that he would find a gold vein not too far from where Darby stopped. So the junkman did… and hit a gold vein three feet from where Darby gave up. Darby had been three feet from being a millionaire.
Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending for Darby, because Darby knew how to learn his lesson and apply it to his life. Go check it out!
Put in trader terms, when the market tells you “No”, don’t accept that and give up. Ask yourself why and what you can do different on your next trade to make it a “Yes”.
Edit: As I said, my recall of the details may be off, and they were. Reread the story and turns out they originally did find gold, but not enough to pay back their debts or become rich before they lost the vein and eventually gave up and sold the equipment to the junk man that DID strike it rich in that mine. But the lesson of the story remains the same. Just wanted to clear that up.
3 Likes
Thanks 
Survival rate is higher as many brokers cite 70-75% of losing traders on their platforms. Most fail because of improper money management, they tend to enter high-risk traders, refusing to accept loss and cutting profitable trades short.
3 Likes
Simple reason - Fear and Hope. There are lots of sensible strategies available and if applied correctly and with consistency they are profitable. Most new traders take profits too early fearing the small profit they have will disappear. They also let losing trades run in the hope they will turn around. If they did the opposite letting profitable trades run and cutting losing ones early then the strategy can play out.
1 Like
I strongly appreciate with you in this regard because in my experience I saw many newbie traders directly jump into trading without learning how to trade properly. As a result, they fall flat after a few days.