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I posted these thoughts in an unrelated thread but they would have been more appropriate here.
Money Management is the most important thing you can do because you have 100% control of it. You have 0% control if a stock/currency/derivative goes up or down. Sit and think about that for a long time.
MM is 1000x more important than doing T.A. I actually never look at charts. T.A is for fools who think they can predict the future. They will claim they that predicted moves. Guess what a price can only do 2 things, go up or go down. There is no third dimension it can go into!
So someone doing TA should be right at least 50% of the time. People remember the times they were right and suppress the memories of when they were wrong which skews their thoughts.
If you use TA and are wrong 50% or more of the time and losing money sit and think about that for a very, very long time. I would suggest not trading again till you have come up with an answer.
Draw enough lines on a chart and you will see price react to them
Think about this. With absolutely no TA I could enter 1000 total random positions, 500 would immediately become winners. As I said if you do TA and lose more than 50% of the time there is something seriously wrong with your understanding of trading and MM
Here is a good exercise that I used to do with forex to sharpen my skills. Take the 32 main pairs. Randomly buy and sell so you are 16 buys/16 sells.
Now manage the trades as you see fit, do whatever it takes but NEVER EVER look at the charts!! only look at the total P/L
Do this over and over and over and over until you realize that you can become profitable using only MM. Remember you will be immediately profitable on 50% of the positions by doing absolutely nothing.
The first few times are hard. But you have to bend your mind and think differently.
NEVER look at the charts, human brains are wired to look for patterns.
The results will be enlightening and profitable for those who are willing to take on the endeavour.
One more thing for the TA people. Consider this, Steve Nisson is considered to be the father of candlestick analysis having brought them to N.A from Japan and written many books about it.
Yet he does not trade.....
You would think the man who is the master of candlestick patterns would be able to use his knowledge and use the markets like he is raiding a piggy bank
Yet he does not trade.....
If the Master of chart analysis does not trade what hope do you have?
This was one of the critical pieces of information that I learned and I stopped using charts and then I became profitable.
The only thing I look at are option chains