I've learned for myself, and seen it in many others, that the more they or I learn and then try to apply, the more confused we can become.
To me, this doesn't mean that we have to stop learning or reading books or investigating new methods. What it does mean is that it's important to separate the learning process from the application of the learning. I make the analogy that trying to follow multiple trading systems can be like trying to drive a car with multiple steering wheels. It just won't work. It becomes confusing and it's overcomplicated.
The statemens about stepping back and having an open mind, and about you having to learn for yourself, that was quoted in this thread, are so very true in my experience. Through your own observations, and open-minded (so well put!) interaction with new ideas, and reading, etc, you are going to get an idea of what indicators or methods make the most sense to you.
And then you have to do more than observe -- of course this is my opinion and I am excited to hear what others have to say -- then you have to test the methods that you learn. You go back in time and you apply what you have learned and you prove whether it works or not. You learn whether the method experiences drawdowns that are unnacceptable, or whether it has a great win percentage but a bad average winner to loser size, or whether it requires you to keep an unrealistic schedule that negatively affects your health. This process of learning, making a hypothesis, and then testing that hypothesis, can take a long time. That's why so many traders fail, I think: they realize how much effort can go into "making a system your own" and instead they just start trading again, because of financial pressures, an addiction to trading, or because they simply feel that all that testing is unnecessary.
Once that learning and testing process is complete, you start applying what you've tested in the market. Do you get the same results? Or are they not what you expected based on your testing? You can share your results with a friend or mentor or spouse or people at FF -- someone who cares about your success. They can hold you accountable to apply what you have learned and tested in a disciplined way, and then they can help you stop trading if it's not working, or encourage you to be confident and continue to take the necessary risks associated with trading if the system is working.
All throughout this process, you are emphasizing learning and testing, and making a system "your own", and you are de-emphasizing lots of trading, you are reducing stress about whether you are doing it "right", you are proving to yourself that you can learn and test and implement.
And then as you implement a system that you have made your own, and you are profitable, you can repeat the process with more learning, more testing, and so on. It can be a continuous process that lasts a lifetime.
To bring it full circle, hopefully, one helpful thing for me (which I have seen with others) is that they focus their learning on one or two things at a time, then test, then implement, then hold themselves accountable to others and themselves. And this reduces the confusion associated with looking at so many things, so many systems, so many methods, and not "knowing what to follow."
To me, this doesn't mean that we have to stop learning or reading books or investigating new methods. What it does mean is that it's important to separate the learning process from the application of the learning. I make the analogy that trying to follow multiple trading systems can be like trying to drive a car with multiple steering wheels. It just won't work. It becomes confusing and it's overcomplicated.
The statemens about stepping back and having an open mind, and about you having to learn for yourself, that was quoted in this thread, are so very true in my experience. Through your own observations, and open-minded (so well put!) interaction with new ideas, and reading, etc, you are going to get an idea of what indicators or methods make the most sense to you.
And then you have to do more than observe -- of course this is my opinion and I am excited to hear what others have to say -- then you have to test the methods that you learn. You go back in time and you apply what you have learned and you prove whether it works or not. You learn whether the method experiences drawdowns that are unnacceptable, or whether it has a great win percentage but a bad average winner to loser size, or whether it requires you to keep an unrealistic schedule that negatively affects your health. This process of learning, making a hypothesis, and then testing that hypothesis, can take a long time. That's why so many traders fail, I think: they realize how much effort can go into "making a system your own" and instead they just start trading again, because of financial pressures, an addiction to trading, or because they simply feel that all that testing is unnecessary.
Once that learning and testing process is complete, you start applying what you've tested in the market. Do you get the same results? Or are they not what you expected based on your testing? You can share your results with a friend or mentor or spouse or people at FF -- someone who cares about your success. They can hold you accountable to apply what you have learned and tested in a disciplined way, and then they can help you stop trading if it's not working, or encourage you to be confident and continue to take the necessary risks associated with trading if the system is working.
All throughout this process, you are emphasizing learning and testing, and making a system "your own", and you are de-emphasizing lots of trading, you are reducing stress about whether you are doing it "right", you are proving to yourself that you can learn and test and implement.
And then as you implement a system that you have made your own, and you are profitable, you can repeat the process with more learning, more testing, and so on. It can be a continuous process that lasts a lifetime.
To bring it full circle, hopefully, one helpful thing for me (which I have seen with others) is that they focus their learning on one or two things at a time, then test, then implement, then hold themselves accountable to others and themselves. And this reduces the confusion associated with looking at so many things, so many systems, so many methods, and not "knowing what to follow."
