Further thoughts about trading in the current sideways trending market I wrote “the inherrant erratic nature of the share market without any strong trend up or down (the trend has been sideways for approx. 4 months) makes it almost impossible for the average punter to make a profit from it.” Shiftting the blame for lack of success onto “the market” is that good enough ? If we come to that conclusion then we should not be wasting our time or money trying to beat it.
i am sure there are plenty who are sufficiently smart to make some money from this market, but very difficult for the average punter
Without us thinking too much about it “the house” takes a good percentage which tips the odds against us - the spread at both ends of a trade makes a difference, plus the commission.....in my case of a lot of more trades than average that would amount to quite a bit in its self......
Then there are the fallibilities, that most of us have, remove these and we might have a better chance..... my own appear to be - totally overlooking risk when i see a good opportunity....recent examples are the disproportionate allocation of funds to one trade as in MYR, the reversion to riskier stocks such as QAN, and back into gold stocks (portugal concerns seem like more a storm in a tea cup so i will be getting rid of those)..... I said my bit to some of my fellow punters here about what i think they should be doing so not much point stretching the friendship there again.....
The obvious strategy to me is --- at the top of the markets trading band - close long trades and open short trades and at the bottom of the markets trading band - to open long trades and close short trades... plus - having regard also to the movement of each individual stock. A fresh thought is - a different set of stocks could be used for trading in each direction ie. Downward trending stocks for shorts and upward trending stocks for longs....
Long in the US markets seems to be the best bet to me – at least there is a trend to trade with, and forget the doomsdayers, just “trade what you see”...
