Hi kbit,

Thanks for the response and encouragement, agree with experimenting with another methodology you're right. At the same time, a good trader can make money from any moving average crosses and traders with poor psychology will lose whatever the methodology. I'm convinced psychology is everything. A few things am finding really are true:

- newbie traders trade the market perfectly. It's not they can't trade and don't know the markets, they lose with such consistency it's astonishing there is clearly some knowledge there that is worth investigating. What they don't know is what to do with that information, they use it in a way that is governed by emotion and so lose every time.

- traders have two minds. their high mental response, and their possibly more physiological emotional response. it is the battle between these two that is trading. It is a battle between the spiritual and physical even.

- rule based trading and having "an edge" with a setup I've found are often vague at best. The real reason rule-based systems work for discretionary traders is that the rules provide a framework for controlling your emotional response, and learning from your higher mental response which can respond to the markets very well.

- trading a demo account and a live one at the same time can help. Not to reverse each other, both in the same direction. I am convinced again there are two mindsets, one where you know you are trading to win on an account and one where you are trading to lose. These days I can literally feel the switch - where I regain control of myself and I know I am trading again to actually profit and in control, or am trading according to emotion and will lose, if you play around with reversing yourself for long enough the two states are distinct.

- A very recent discovery just yesterday. You can choose simply not to get emotional. Whenever emotional responses start kicking in, when you realize it just tell yourself "no emotion" and take a breath. You don't need to feel this, this one trade doesn't matter, and just do what the charts are already telling you. You know what the price is doing now, it's just responding to it logically and dispassionately, rather than emotionally. This looks to be exceptionally useful, you can make this choice.

Hope this helps people, this may be an unusual approach, but for me this is infinitely more rewarding than wiggly indicator lines, and this little act of confessionalism is in itself possibly something many traders could benefit from. I agree the honesty is refreshing, when you get truly, horrendously honest with your own trading performance and work through that, good things happen. Cheers,

Jeremy

i have screened shared with some very good traders that were green most days...none of them i could use there method..here is why... in the end none used a hard set of rules for entry or management..that is the whole in the class of all the trading folks i have look at...and i seen a lot. by the tempo and what the market is not doing they can internalize that info and act on it. to put it in a better example it is like play music ... if you have herd or in there case seen that song many times you know when there is something off key... what ever method is used ..it is necessary to spend a lot of time on it...after you have internalize it..you see when it works but far more important. when it does not work..most trader do not go that way..they just keep looking..for something that works all the time // a lock .

I wonder why that is? Most of the traders I know trade with a clearly-articulatable set of well-defined rules. I myself have a setup so well-defined that I know exactly what my stop, entry, and exits are before I enter the trade. I can't imagine successfully trading any other way.

I have another friend who trades emotionally - "oh, the market is moving, I'm going to jump in!" Not surprisingly, she's not very successful at all.

@tturner86 and I have discussed this concept in the past, and we refer to it as the George Costanza method, from the Sienfeld episode where George realizes everything he does is wrong and so he does the exact opposite.

To that effect, the best way to trade this method is to simply create an 'inverse' price chart and trade it.

Let us know how it goes...

p.s. -- the interesting thing is that theoretically, if you start to realize you are consistently losing with this method, then just flip the chart back to normal

You wouldn't happen to know how to create an inverse chart would you, I've got a copier that can reverse or just copy Ninjatrader trades, it uses all kinds of interesting code not officially supported by Ninjatrader but in the program, but a inverse chart never seen that before. If anyone has a solution do let me know thanks.

Or I could just turn my notebook upside down,

Jeremy

I did create an indicator for NT7 that has the option to invert prices here, but you have to be an elite member:

Download: DuplicateBars Ever wanted to add a second "chart" with a second series of identical Price Bars right below the main panel? Now, you can with the Duplicate Bars indicator. This allows you to view a whole new set of Price Bar-based indicators perfectly aligned with … personsrgtroy

Anyway, the basic concept is to multiply price by -1, which can be done in any program.

share some of those set-ups and rules with the rest of us. the traders i referenced could tell when the trade was working and let it run or get out be for the stop was hit .. they could do that by reading order flow an market breath indicators..i have not had much luck with patterns or re test failures ,, brake outs...fibs, waves, profiles...the normal stuff//

@tturner86 and I have discussed this concept in the past, and we refer to it as the George Costanza method, from the Sienfeld episode where George realizes everything he does is wrong and so he does the exact opposite.



To that effect, the best way to trade this method is to simply create an 'inverse' price chart and trade it.

Let us know how it goes...

p.s. -- the interesting thing is that theoretically, if you start to realize you are consistently losing with this method, then just flip the chart back to normal

I use Murrey Math lines on a 4-tick range chart. The lines I use are 8/8 for the bottom of resistance, and +1/8 for the top of resistance, 0/8 for the top of support, and -1/8 for the bottom of support. Also note 4/8, the midpoint.

When price action comes up from -1/8 and crosses 0/8 to the upside, if that candle closes above the 0/8 (top of support) line, I go long at that point, placing my stop 1 tick below the -1/8 line (bottom of support). If I'm trading 2 contracts, I take 1 contract off when price action crosses the 4/8 midpoint, and move my stop to break-even +2 ticks. At that point, the trade is no-loss. When price action crosses the bottom of resistance (8/8 line), I close out the trade.

I use the same setup for shorts, except using the bottom of resistance for the entry and top of support for the exit. These rules allow me to know precisely where the entry, stop, and exit for the trade is.

Hope this helps.