I have one through the newbie stages and now I accept and embrace a lot of what people expect out of a good trader... Although, it seems like people who have been here much, much longer than I. In every thread, if someone happens to mention they have x amount of success... people will ask them for what they use. "What system do you have?!?!?!".. followed by a pathetic trail of people posting their emails.
I know someone who has been trading less than a year and has returned well over 1000%. People don't seem to understand that the market is random and based off of human emotion. They may know and acknowledge it but they don't seem to embrace it. Realize that this person's system (and this statement will be grossly underestimated and possibly ignored) is very, very simple. Consisting of one basic indicator, 2 MA's, and a few s/r and fib levels. That's all. He sticks to his plan and uses a lot of discretion.
Realize that any mechanical system without discretion is linear.. meaning it's based on past results. Just by assuming you can achieve half the success as a semi-good discretionary trader, you are not acknowledging that the market is not unique and not based on human emotion.
I have been working 10 hour days for months now and I still have not been able to get to my short term goals, but I won't stop; although, I can say without hesitation that using and applying this knowledge to my benefit saves me 100s or even 1000s of hours trying to find my grail.
There is one problem, as a side note, that I have incured now.... I'm not sure if it's the charts confusing me, the past month or two... or anything else hindering my ability to see a clear cut strategy work. When I started out it seemed like I can make 20+ PIPs with a 60% success rate and now I seem to not be able to figure it out anymore. I know that the past month has not been a GREAT one, but I still have not been able pull anything off. Probably "trader's block"?
