Lastnight Swiss stunned worldcup favourites Spain with 1:0 victory. The skillful Spanish have been described as ‘the team of the century’ however they lost to underdog Swiss, not through their superior skills of individual players but through tactical deficit.
The only different in the team was Ottmar Hitzfeld, the Swiss manager. As I was still living in Germany, he carried FC Bayern Munich to multiple championships and was twice elected as ‘World Coach of the year’.

Trading is a game of strategy, similiar to football or war. It’s a battle between you and opposing team. The idea is the game such as football does not depend only on individual skills but more of tactical and team effort. Throughout my past trading career I constantly searching for more superior methods which don’t bring much improvement.  The realisation comes usually after many of methods are beaten by market because they work but not working all the time.  Similiar to football if I keep playing the same game without adapting to opponent strategy, I would be beaten flat despite having superior skills.
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The holy grail is in you

No mentor or course can give anyone the holy grail to the success of trading in the markets.

The main inventors of technical analysis such as Charles Dow with his Dow theorie, R. N Elliot who introduces elliot waves, W.Wilder with his known RSI (Relative Strength Index), ADX and other indicators such as MACD, Stochastic, etc are all important development of technical studies.

And then there are some swear by the accuracy of candlestick, reversal patterns, pivots and fibonacci numbers.

I went to a course teaching a holy grail by applying common indicators with his magic parameter. And then I went to another course which said he has predictive moving average line. And those courses are not cheap despite only a few hours long. I dumped aside the manual after attending the courses as all of them are bullshitting. I used those courses with the intention to measure myself to know how far I’ve moved ahead of others instead of looking for new holy grail.

Many books are written and multi million dollar courses are earned just to make author or course leader rich. The attraction to the riches are so great that it’s simply too easy to say that suckers are born each day.

The market is like living organism that learns to adapt to different events. It simply reflects the behavior of participants engaged in the market. Sometimes friendly and certainly are out of sound mind most of the time.

So the available technical studies are only tools to measure as closely as possible possible outcome of many unsound minds in the market.

So how do you read the unsound mind as a medical doctor? Some have suceeded after years of practicing but most of new doctors will fail to recognize what the mental health people are telling them.

Being a sucker myself I came to the realisation only after thousands of dollar lost, years in wasted time spent and spoken to the real trader that has amazed his millions from the market I stop seeking the holy grail tools of profiting from the market as the holy grail is in you.

TA isn’t holy grail

Many books have are written on technical probability or analysis (TA) of stock analysis since the advancement of computer system. TA is not new but yet the development in this area is hitting exponential growth only in the past 10-15 years.

Since joining as fulltime trader I came to realise that many of my seniors (with 20 more years of experience) aren’t good in chart reading.
Their sophistication of making money does not lie in chart but more of reading and manipulating the market momentum.

Personally I read countless books on TA subjects and practiced what is taught by the author with the given indicator.
I always hunt for secret formula which I believed the author formulating them for the best interest of their readers.
What I and many failed to realise is that all these studies (indicators) are basically statistical results plotted in a graphic as chart. This graphic should only be used as guide to assist traders in their decision process.

I would from many years of my study to say they all work or they all don’t work at all.
This may sound confusing because I use chart and it works for me, but my friend uses chart and it doesn’t work for him.

The problem with most technical traders is that they use technical studies as if it is holy grail.

Introduction

I have been trading for living for the past 2 years and have been consistently getting positive return from the market.
In my first year (2008) I have been a conservative trader due to the fact that the market was not very condusive and I need time to prove myself with constant profitability.

The conservative nature has become a habit despite my current ability to consistently deliver positive result. I need to come out from this comfort zone and expand myself for more profit opportunities.

My goal for 2010 has been to increase 3x or 5x my usual trading size which in result multiplying my profit.

The secret of trading is not found in the charts, it is found in you.
The ability for yourself to keep improving by knowing your weakness and strength.

I hate to write long story as it takes too much time and concentration.
In this section you’ll mostly be seeing continual short stories.