" Get to a point where you can describe your one instruments typical behavior and feel the way it moves. Know if a certain day is moving faster than usual. Know if a certain day is choppier than usual. You will never learn any of this if you're trying to follow 6 instruments"

baie mooi gese^

Step 1 - stop buying shit.

Step 2 - hold yourself accountable.


Mike

There are only two types of traders. Informed traders and noise traders.

All noise traders of course believe themselves to be informed traders.

Once you accept this you can start forming strategies around modern reality. If you stick with 300 year old rice farmer strategies don't complain when it doesn't work.

Step 1 - stop buying shit.

Yes, I would agree it's sensible to realize that the HFT industry has it's own competition. I realize there are a lot of server, and manpower fixed and variable costs in an HFT firm. It may be approaching the status of oligopic competition where there are just a set of major winning firms making it harder for startups. It may not be HFT is targeting retailers; maybe it's just side effects from some volume unnamed but I feel candlestick patterns have somehow been less effective over a period of recent years. It's just harder for retailers due to some side effects. Just seemed to be alarming news recently about how much volume is mostly automated these days back on the HFT thread and other news. I have no idea what the SEC or the trading community will react to this or what will be done in the future about this.

For the sake of the OP question, you may place less emphasis on HFT. Since it's just my opinion. And my information is limited. It's a different market these days. there is a lot more noise. Maybe I am "blaming" too much on HFT and algos based on my personal training and needed to curb my words. So I'll just finish saying it may be it's just more competitive for everyone involved, retailers and HFT. Maybe try longer time frame price action trading on the 4 hour or daily time frame with the value traders-investors. Possibly the candlestick patterns look better than than the small minute ones. Everyone else and OP included can see for themselves manually trading the smaller time frame minute charts and see how clean the candles look or not.

100%

That's my answer!
Whatever it takes. I am in it for the long run!

You walk into a franchise expo with the intent of finding a business you could start up that would support yourself and your family. You talk to one fellow who tells you the sky is the limit on profitability for his franchise and would only cost you $30k to become proud franchise owner. They would provide you with 10 weeks of intensive training, help you set up the right equipment, help you set up your accounts. They would provide you with a 1yr enrollment in their mentorship program where a successful franchisee would be available to talk with you several times a week and help you work on your motivational issues.

Sounds pretty good huh?

And then you find a economics study that compares franchise success rates and you look at the top of the list where you find a host of familiar names with rates > 70% and down at the bottom of the list...the very bottom of the list...you find TradersRUs with a success rate of 9%.

What are you going to do?

I've used this example quite a bit when meeting someone who wants to learn how to become a trader. They will talk about it enthusiastically as a business they would like to get into. That's when I pull out the franchise analogy to make the point that it is misleading to view trading as an owner operated business like any other owner operated business. If it were like other businesses and was compared with the same success/failure metrics...you would be a fool to even begin.

I confess to having played the mentor role on several occasions over the years. There have been times where I have become so committed to helping someone succeed that I'd spend weeks sharing desktops with them for 10hrs/day. Always I could get the person to the point where they understood the why and the where of a trading opportunity. I'd even reverse roles and had them mentor me just to be sure they got whatever it was I had to give. But no matter what I tried it was just not possible for me to help them punch through the final psychological barriers to successful trading. In the end I found the whole process very frustrating and depressing.

There is an element to being a successful trader that is very difficult to quantify. I think it has to do with what you learn from the experience of actual trading (as opposed to sim trading). In part this explains the importance placed on risk management. You blow up you account you can't trade. You can't trade you don't acquire the experience. Persistence was mentioned earlier and it is really the same argument. You have to keep at it to acquire the experience. In many ways this suggests we are self taught in that we learn how to be successful from the doing of it. It comes from within.

And, just as I could spend many years applying oil paint to canvas and never be able to make a living as a fine artist, you could spend many years looking at charts and never make it as a trader.

But sometimes in life the best thing to do is give it a go and see what happens.

Do you have the capital to survive until that happens?

Let's do some basic math. Say you were trading with $10k. You need that money to last 5 years. So you can lose $2k a year, divide that by number of trading days. I did a rough number of 140 trading days a year (not for sure on real number). So you could afford to lose $14 a day for 140 days a year for 5 years. That is the max you need to trade to ensure your capital last your time period.

Just some food for thought. That will determine what you can trade, Spot FX, Futures, Stocks, etc.