The secret to successful trading

I just put out a Tweet that I wanted to share with you all, because I didn't realize that I was going to turn it into a thread, until I did, and wanted to make sure you all got to see it to.

Here's the link to the Tweet, would love a like, retweet and share it with any other traders you know who needs to hear this!

https://twitter.com/ChrisDMacro/status/1281377299900715008

And if not, no worries, here's the Tweet because I love you all!

In yesterdays live session in the trading lab we covered a number of topics But one of the best one was that the magic isn't in the indicator it is in what the indicator is telling us about the characteristics of that market

a thread...

There are basically 2 types of markets Trending and mean reverting A market is either trending up/down or reverting back to the median (sideways)

Markets fail to breakout and trend 80% of the time Or breakouts that follow through and become trends only happen about 20% of the time But when they do they can go a lot longer and a lot further than most expect or believe is possible $NQ for example here

$AMZN here It spent a lot of time trying to breakout through 2019, but 2020 is a completely different story

$TSLA is another great example, it goes sideways for a long time breaking out and reverting, but when it finally goes, it goes much further than anyone expects

Knowing this information you can either have a strategy to trade only breakouts that trend Or a strategy that finds breakouts that fail and revert to the mean These are the two type of setups that all setups are built around

Matching the strategy to the regime (trending or mean reverting) gives you an edge that most traders overlook They force a strategy to apply it to all markets And this is why indicators get you into trouble thinking that you need to focus on finding the best combo of indicators

It should be the other way around, identify the regime (trending/mean reverting) and match an appropriate indicator to that regime And this is where the pandora box gets opened about KNOWING what your indicator is telling you

Some indicators can be used for both trade types (trending/mean reverting) but they need to be used differently Look at $USDCAD with 10/20 SMA applied notice the 10/20 x-over and over and over = mean reversion notice that 10/20 point straight up and travel = trend

Or another way to see it is if 10/20 keep crossing over and over you are in a mean reversion regime and to fade rips and buy dips If 10/20 are pointing in same direction its trending and need to buy dips and buy rips

The 10/20SMA tells you the regime and gives you some great characteristics of both market types Notice the size of candles when 10/20 crosses over often - candles are tiny When 10/20 point in the same direction and travel some distance, the candles are huge

And if you know that about regimes, you don't need the 10/20SMA to tell you the regime you can look at the chart and see small candle bodies with price going sideways = mean reversion Large candle bodies with price going higher = trending

So when I see traders with charts covered in indicators it usually means that they don't undersand regimes and usually wouldn't understand that their stack of indicators are basically telling them the same thing just with different names and squiggly magic lines

Having a bunch of indicators often times means the trader is going to get a trade signal on all 5 indicators!!! "oh wow all 5 of my indicators signal a selloff is coming, load the boat shoooort, I've never seen it so bearish!"

Yet it's really only 1 sell signal and usually in an extremely bullish regime These traders are usually the hero top calling traders If you are trying to figure this stuff out, join us at http://pollinatetrading.com and join the Trading Lab, we are going deep on this stuff. Do it!

Ask yourself right now after everything you just read "does this look like a mean reverting setup?" Or ask yourself, "is that a breakout that is trending and trending breakouts last longer and go further than everyone expects" $QQQ