johnpaulca
12,036 posts
msg #66215
- Ignore johnpaulca |
8/15/2008 8:57:29 AM
Here is an interesting article from Pristine.com.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? This question has bogged the minds of Philosophers and scientific know-it-alls for centuries. And I'm not the one that's going to provide you with the answer. After spending 28 seconds thinking about this matter, I decided that there are subjects more important to discuss here in terms of trading. Things that might present us the same dilemma.
What comes first, consistency or profits? Now, this is a question that's in the mind of every aspiring trader. Well of course profits, you might say! You can't have consistency unless you perform several profitable trades. Consistency can't be construed to be just a streak of profitable trades. Even my mother can have several profitable trades, and she's not a trader, let alone consistent. A profitable winning streak can occur to any trader on a bullish run in the market, or be the product of sheer luck.
So consistency must mean something more than just a bunch of profitable trades. Looking it up in the dictionary, consistency is defined as: "Reliability or uniformity of successive results or events". This uniformity starts, of course, with a well-developed trading plan. You simply can't be consistent if you're chasing any trading "opportunity" that you get from a friend or CNBC. Even if you're a technically trained trader, just possessing some knowledge of chart analysis won't make you automatically consistent.
So, you learn a setup or two, and you're set! Of course, if it were that simple, even my mother could learn to be consistent. Of course that's not all there is to it! Setups alone don't make a trader. The same setup, under different market conditions, would produce different results.
You need to learn a group of reliable setups, based on a proven method, and then learn to apply those under the ever-changing conditions of the markets. Read the last sentence again. Especially that last part. One of the key aspects of consistency is the fact that markets are environments in constant change. If markets were "scientifically correct" environments, where the same setup under similar circumstances would produce the same result, then achieving consistency would be a snap. But the markets are not laboratories. Thus, consistency would be defined as trading similar events under similar market conditions, and obtaining a good percentage of successful outcomes, while dealing in a logical and economical manner with the successful and unsuccessful outcomes.
So what comes first? Profits or consistency? Well, I would have to say consistency. The proper use of setups, under proper market conditions, and under a strict trading plan that deals with the management of successful and unsuccessful trades would, under a disciplined approach, ultimately produce consistent profits. Now that's a concept that makes sense.
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