The Title, Heading, or Hint !

By Author: Julia Robinson, 2022

I've been trading stocks and gold all my life. One thing I gradually became aware of during this experience was that the strategies which make the most logical sense typically are the ones which work the best.

There are so many investment strategies I get offered I could probably spend 2 life times working through them all. And a small fortune working out which ones don't work. What I have found though is you can short cut this process simply by looking logically at them. Quite often when you robustly go through the logic of an investment strategy you will find holes in it. And big holes too, holes that will make you lose your money.

Its quite possible that these strategies, in their wholeness work quite well. But the problem is that if you are trading with a trading system which has holes in it, at some stage you'll come up against a real life situation where the trading system has no answer. Then you'll be on your own and you'll need to make a decision outside the strategy. This can be an educated guess, to an intuitive judgment call, to a flip of a coin.

If a trading system leaves you guessing, when you make these guesses, you are gambling. A proper trading system will leave no contingency for guesswork. It will cover all scenarios taking human error out of the equation. It will be systemized and complete.

This guess work also breaks down the functioning of a trading system. If you are guessing parts of it, or making decisions outside the guidance of the trading system, how can you be sure that the system is driving your results or your other decisions are? If you can not be sure of this, how can you have confidence in your trading system?

So if someone presents you a trading system, go through the logic with a fine tooth comb. See if you can come up with scenarios which may happen in real life, which the system dose not cover. If you can think of some, try to get answers for these scenarios before you start trading with real money. Because believe me, if such scenarios exist, as soon as you put money down they will come up. I think 2020 - 2022 taught us all that.

And don't forget to dummy trade before you put any money down. When you are demo trading you will most likely find a bunch of trading scenarios you never thought about before. Make sure these are covered by the logic of the systemtoo. Its much easier to sort this stuff out without money, than when you have money on the line.