Many thanks CTNZ for the postings.

PS: basic, assembler, php, coldfusion, others I have forgotten.

coldfusion? I haven't heard that name in years. What platform?

Thanks for the post, very informative.

2+ year follow up since my last post on this thread.

Anyone still here who read my original post? Curious how many survivors it helped?

For me i am still at it and doing the same stuff. Nothing has really changed as I am a vampire. I am a vampire because I trade in the middle of my night which is the day in the USA. I still think the same and still freight train it.

You always need to see both sides of the market not just a long or a short but either, be neutral. If you think just one way you will get blind sided as you won't see the torpedo coming from the other direction at you until it hits, then it is too late as you are sunk. If you think long that is all you will let yourself see. If you look at both directions all the time you are always ready to go the other way or at least take a draw down.

You shouldn't see long or short but opportunity. But your analytics you are basing your decisions on needs to be solid. None of this namby pamby indicator stuff but reading price action alone and understanding what it is telling you.

Lets start with some basics. A stop or profit target is the opposite side of what you did to get into the trade. So if you bought/went long you have to sell/go short to get out vice versa if you sold/went short you have to buy to get out. So the other side of your profit target or stop is the same of what you did to get in to the other side of that trade. A Short stop to you is a buy to the other side. You need to fully understand the other side of your trade. You need to get this very clear in your mind.

So if you go long you are basically putting a buy order at a better price farther down. The big boys can get Level III (the order book) which tells you every stop in an instrument. So they can see your stop and everybody else's stop as well. I call it food. When there is enough food they go for it every time. Almost all traders are taught the same thing "put your stop behind a pivot". So a lot of traders put their stop at the very same place. "They" herd traders like cattle."They" paint price action to get you to do exactly what they want. "They" do it every day, all day long. The only way "they"make money is if you lose money.

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The price action moves to get you and others to do the wrong thing. When enough traders have fallen for a false move they go after the food. They can see the food(your stop), you can't but "they" can. For proof you can see a stop run after the fact in the volume.

Ever gone long when price is falling like a rock? Or gone short after a new high is made. It is hard to pull the trigger. They call it freight train trading because you normally get freight trained or run over. So the best or most profitable trade might have been at the low or high but most people will wait for confirmation or the turn. I will go short at the turn or yes sometimes before it turns but most traders will wait, often waiting for some indicator to tell them to pull the trigger which has more lag than a millennium clock. I am not counter trend trading I just have some pretty good analytic's I created for myself which fit who I am.

What do you trade btw?

Denise's book is a solid investment in yourself for not much money. You will learn stuff about yourself you never knew including things outside of trading.

Logically, if you have a probability that you know will only apply for a limited period of time , and by definition that probability tells you that you have a significant chance of being wrong, even while it still applies, how much do you really know?