Would denuding help?
Hi Traders
Fancy a game of strip poker with your charts? I’m on a risqué crusade to get fellow traders to denude their charts and join me in the colony of naked trading.
More than 15 years in the business has turned me into an opinionated mouthpiece. I should come with a warning tag. What I’ve got to say could really upset the status quo with some.
So let’s get that out of the way first shall we?
Disclaimer: Opinions are a bit like salad dressing. And who among us likes a salad WITHOUT dressing?
That said, in life and in trading, there are many dressings to choose from – So buffet goers should really consult their own taste first. Tantric measures are usually recommended first – That’s when you look at the various salad dressings on display but don’t immediately pour.
A long way of saying, what follows here is just one trader’s opinion – Nothing more. And ultimately because a dry salad is a bad PR wrap for a whole sector of the food group.
Now with those formalities out of the way, I believe we were talking about denuding our charts. That’s right. I’m talking about hovering your finger over the delete button. Then removing all those indicators which have encroached so much they’ve become the prominent foreground on your chart.
And why do this?
Because chances are you’re over cloaked. The foreground of your indicators could well be obscuring what’s underneath.
Naked trading asks a trader to read the actual raw data on the chart. The raw data on the chart is its own language. It’s the information all traders have. Peak and trough formation IS the street talk. You have to SEE it to actually read it.
Let’s put this another way. Would you go and live in France and not bother to learn French?
It’s the same logic that makes me ask why people would take up trading and not learn the language of the charts.
Well the answer is probably best investigated by reverse engineering the question. What happens if you DO go and live in France BUT DON’T bother to learn the language? Well, you have to look for external translation. And hope the translation is accurate. And not a game of Chinese Whispers where little by little, the accuracy of the information becomes eroded.
As you sit there and nurse your status quo,
let me just drizzle a tiny bit more of my salad dressing……….and say
…your lovely little indicators all look great in backtesting. But they are not real time performers. They lag.
So if what I’m saying is such a no-contest, why are there so few people on this gravy train? Well, if you were going to learn to speak French, it would take time. And then you’d have to practice. And that’s where it falls apart for most people. An agenda to start making money is too often put on top of the desire to be accomplished.
Trading isn’t the only profession where ambition is so often placed before craft. It does pay to remember:- Before a million dollars flows into anyone’s existence, they usually make a million mistakes. And when you get around to correcting some of the flawed premises we bring to trading and indeed life, we soon realize that sometimes the LONG cut is really the SHORT cut. And we might very well be there by now if we took this route.
Disclaimer – This post is intended for information and entertainment purposes only. It should not be regarded as financial advice, recommendation, or solicitation of any product, service or trading strategy.