A picture of a chess board with pieces in play as an analogy to Trading Strategy

STRATEGY WITHOUT TACTICS IS THE SLOWEST ROUTE TO VICTORY;
TACTICS WITHOUT STRATEGY IS THE NOISE BEFORE DEFEAT.............Sun Tzu The Art Of War

Some of you reading this are just learning to trade. You may be so new that you do not trade as of yet and thus have no trading style. Most of you however have traded, and by virtue of the fact that you are on this site, you likely are something less than successful. So be it. There is no shame in that. The shame would be in remaining comfortable in that situation.

Elsewhere on this site we have discussed the essential elements of a trading Strategy. They are as follows:

These first two elements are closely correlated but not the same. You not only have to have an idea, usually based on countless hours of observations, but you also have to figure out how you plan to take advantage of that idea. You must understand the best mechanism of trading, such that you make make money off of your trading hypothesis.

So I have a question for those of you who trade. How do you trade? What approach do you use to take advantage of your ideas on market behavior? What are the specifics of the trading strategy and tactics that you use. Take just a moment to think about this question and sincerely try to answer it. In fact get a pencil and paper and describe in detail the answer to this question. I know you do not want to do this, but humor me. Get the paper and write. Write on a notebook page from one of your trading journals, or something similar because you may want to keep this for future reference. Be as specific as you possibly can and write down all the details.

"Think about your trading strategy"

Now that you have (hopefully) taken the time to write down what it is that you do when you trade, ................move down on the same piece of paper and explain why it is you do that. Don't fudge and give general terms, such as "because it works". Write exactly why it is that you have come to use the approach that you use. In detail please, and be specific. This is important.

This is.....

simply..

a break.....

to give you all of you who chose not to participate with the exercise above, time to rethink
and get paper and pen and write!

When you are done with the above....click this link to see more about developing your trading strategy.