Running discussion on SP, page-3681

Listened to a good interview today and the guy was saying that the only thing you can be certain of in the markets are your entry requirements, i.e. are signals stacking up to go long/short against your strategy. Successful traders know that anything can happen after that, but there's no need to get upset if the trade goes against you because you were right to take the trade, as your strat dictates you should.

If you can make money selling into strength around or before anns then that's great - your strat is on a shorter time period and you're likely moving liquidity around between positions and avoiding having it stagnate (and in this economic environment lose value with inflationary pressures). If you're trading on a much longer time horizon and particularly in this speculative end of the market then you're taking on a lot more risk imo (assuming you have no technical sell rules that is). If anyone can prove that wbt is 100% going to achieve XYZ price over the long term then that would be a compelling and hard to ignore trade.

It's all risk. You can have the most sophisticated fundamental research program and predictive models at your disposal but none of that matters if you have no risk management criteria and that is a really advanced topic that retail tend to ignore. Booking profits on shorter time scales with trends behind you is one way of mitigating a portfolio draw down and achieving a smooth cumulative equity curve.