KING - What's so special about KING?

This essay was created to answer a question I received from one of the visitors to this site. His question was: "what exactly I am doing." He meant what I was doing in KING to produce results like this.

This outstanding result belongs to Katherine, which is even better, as it shows how good some of my students can be. Do you know that the probability of getting 40 straight wins by pure chance is one over trillion!? Yes, that's right, and you should be able to work out this number in your head, in, like, 3 minutes, even if you are slow but good at math. However, since this is not meant to be a math article or anything like that, I am not going to bore you with how to calculate it. I may, though, revisit this point in some other place. On some other occasion.

I used this question as an opportunity to give him my philosophy of KING and also to explain why so many people do not make it in this business. I will return to the latter issue once more later on. And I will also give you a short answer to the question he asked. Meanwhile, read what I told him.

The answer to your question about what it is that I do in KING is rather simple: nothing special. I use standard indicators, for instance.

Yet KING results are certainly impressive and the results of this kind have been achieved by more than one trader, which means that they cannot be easily dismissed as accidental. So what's the reason KING is so good?

The reason has a lot to do with the fact that KING is a purely discretionary methodology and that means it is unlike most other trading methodologies out there that pretend to be mechanical. I use the word "pretend" as most of them are not mechanical. The people selling these methodologies want you to believe that it's just enough to follow some rules (meaning it's mechanical) to make money and yet soon after buying it, you find out that they actually choose their trades, sometimes in hindsight, and it's often the best of the trades that constitute the "track record." Happens too often not to be noticed.

In KING, you do choose your trades, and I don't hide it because that's what discretionary trading is about. What's important, KING is designed to help you do this well. For instance, I use the idea of impediments, which are places where you are very likely to encounter a resistance for your trade and so you are better off not to take it. KING also focuses on finding vulnerabilities in the market and exploiting them to your advantage. It uses patterns more than most other methodologies as patterns tend to be useful for spotting good trading opportunities. While it uses a bunch of indicators, the core being three that give you the entries and exits using the basic strategy, relying only on indicators as the overwhelming majority of trading methodologies do is not the way to go, and is not very encouraged by KING. You want to be smarter than that.

A lot of people out there look for a simple or easy way to trade. And what they often find is an easy way to lose money. That's not a way to become a good trader, but too often many of these people don't even consider that in order to make money day trading you first need to learn how to do this. Just like you need to learn how to play piano well before you can impress anyone with your performance let alone make a living performing. In fact, that's actually the only way to become a good trader. And what this means, in particular, is that you need to spend some time to learn how to read the market well. That's the core and that's what I try to emphasize in KING too. Focus on finding good trading opportunities as opposed to simply taking what some bunch of indicators may suggest as a good trading opportunity. You need to learn how to discriminate between good and not so good opportunities. Still, KING gives you plenty of good opportunities every day, so being more sophisticated and choosy does not have to come at the expense of profits. This can be mastered quite well, too.

Now, I understand that you probably wanted to know more details, but the details are really not so relevant or at least not as relevant as commitment to learning and in KING's spirit I don't want to encourage that. Just like in trading KING where your focus should be on reading the market well before you get into the details of executing the trade, here you also want to keep in mind a bigger picture, namely whether KING's approach works. And I believe, the answer here is "yes." Moreover, at this point, you have much more information about various aspects of KING than the first of my KING students did and yet despite this apparent disadvantage many of them are doing pretty well, some spectacularly well. They are doing well because they took KING seriously and mastered it well, and not because they had some special information prior to buying it.

Plus, there is really no good answer to the question "what exactly I am doing" simply because what I and other KING traders are doing cannot be very precisely described. If only because the details are bound to vary from one trader to another. That is to be expected when it comes to discretionary trading. Two different pianists are bound to play the same work slightly differently. We then talk about different interpretations and no one finds this particularly odd. With discretionary traders it's the same. Even if they follow the same methodology, they are unlikely to trade the same way, particularly if this methodology is rich. That's just the way it is. The proper term for this is "fuzzy," often used in artificial intelligence circles. If you can't accept the fact that things are fuzzy in trading, especially in discretionary trading, you will not be able to handle it.

In fact, one of the reasons why so many people do not succeed in this business is that they find the idea of being independent and doing things differently not much to their liking. They just want to do exactly the same thing someone else does because this feels safe to them. And so they follow "safe" approaches as opposed to sound approaches. Well, the thing is that if everyone were doing exactly the same thing, no one would be making money, so being different is really the key and it is purely discretionary trading where this can be done best. It's where you can really shine as a trader provided you have mastered this craft well. That can be done and several of KING students have done so very well already, and in some cases quite fast too.

There is also another reason why it is not easy to answer "what exactly I am doing." You know, it's very much like asking someone "what exactly are you doing to drive a car?" How to answer this? I am sure that you agree that everyone does this slightly differently, but the only way to show this is probably via a video, except that even then I am not sure one would be able to show what's so special about someone's way of driving. Driving, just like trading, involves quite a bit of multitasking. That's the reason you cannot describe it simply, you cannot reduce it to something simplistic, like one thing. I don't think it even makes sense to do so. But still, you can certainly learn how to do drive a car or how to make money day trading. Driving is also an example of something that is relatively complex. Yet, as this example shows, humans are pretty good at handling complexity, so why seek simplistic trading strategies when instead you can learn how to handle things the way they are? Many people would never consider this approach, yet I am sure that most of them have mastered the art of driving a car quite well. Have you seen a robot driving a car lately? I doubt it, and that's because they are really not good at it. So how good can you be if you approach trading in a robotic, mechanical manner? Well, you will certainly lose to well trained humans.

If you wonder why more people do not choose this way, the fully discretionary approach to trading, I think I know the answer. Two reasons for this I already mentioned: they are more comfortable following others as closely as possible, and so most vendors, knowing that full well, offer strategies that promise making money in mechanical (sort of) ways, even if doing so may not necessarily work well, if at all. And the third reason, that I already brought up before too but would like to return to it again, has to do with looking for quick fixes. And that's the really bad thing because just like dieting, it can, and often does, grow into a very unhealthy habit. Just like diets don't work and there is no substitute to healthy eating, quick fixes don't work in trading either and the best ways that pay off in the long run are the sound ways. Mastering discretionary trading is the best of the soundest, in my opinion.

Let me now summarize for you what I think makes KING stand out:

1) it uses an honest fully discretionary approach to trading,
2) it emphasizes reading the market well,
3) it emphasizes the importance of using price and indicator patterns,
3) it emphasizes looking for good trading opportunities,
4) it emphasizes the importance of learning how to trade well and mastering the trading craft as opposed to relying on quick fixes, 
5) it helps you develop intuition, a great asset that is hard if not impossible to gain via mechanical trading,
6) if there is one way KING is special, it's probably in its effectiveness as demonstrated by quite a few of its traders, but that is pretty much the consequence of 1) through 5).

But there is one more thing that makes KING unique, if not exceptional. This thing has to do with high expectations that I have set for my students. Once you set the expectations high, amazing things can happen. Successful people know this quite well. But this works only if you prove first that these high expectations can be met. I believe I have done so. Otherwise I doubt I would have ever received such a great performance from some of my students in return. What's more, this pattern seems to persist. Of course, setting high expectations without a shred of evidence that they can be achieved is just empty talk and is unlikely to motivate anyone. Or as they say, "talk is cheap." That's precisely the reason why other vendors cannot so easily duplicate this very effective way of enhancing trading performance.

I believe that if you really want to do something, you should aspire to do it well. Or else, why even bother. I think those who are attracted to KING, share the same philosophy.

To be honest, I really hate convincing others to my methods because I don't think that those who need a lot of convincing make the best traders, but I do think that KING is the way to do it well for those who want to succeed at day trading eminis.

He seemed pretty eager to buy KING, but I have not heard from him after treating him to this reply. Precisely as I expected. He said in his email that he had been losing money for months and had learned hard lessons of what did not work. I am afraid, he will continue losing money unless and until he is willing to learn what does work.

I created KING so you don't have to learn the hard way.

He might have learned some hard lessons, but he may still not know the full extent of the damage that he did. Because this damage is not only to his trading account. It is also to his self-confidence. He says that there is no way that what others are doing can possibly work. Well, that's exactly what happens. When you stop trusting yourself, it's even harder to trust others.

Do you know that one of my most accomplished students is 59 years old?

Let me assure you that he did not master KING because he's gotten a brain transplant with a special department in it that reads "KING." Here is one of the emails he sent me in the past. He recently sent me another one saying that he managed to produce over $3000 in less than two hours. 1 hour and 38 minutes, if I recall it correctly. Nice, isn't it?

You know why he is capable of something like that?

Because he trained himself to do it using KING.

As simple as that. Do you know why I can calculate the probability of 40 consecutive wins in my mind in just 3 minutes? Because I have a good background in math which I got by doing a lot of math. You spend some time practicing something, you become good at it.

Now here is the short answer: check out the picture right here. It shows precisely what I am doing. Clear enough? Well, I still think that in order to be able to do what I am doing you need to take the longer version of my answer pretty seriously too.

Knowledge is power.

We live in the knowledge economy. Did you notice how often I stress on this site things that have to do with acquiring knowledge, either via studying or practicing. Did you notice how many times I have used words "learn" or "master" above? Or something to this effect? Probably to a fault. People who think that there is a shorter path to trading success, more often than not end up shortchanging themselves. It is as if they never heard the saying: "If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance."

There is a better, wiser, more productive way to live your life, especially in this day and age. It is by the following credo:

"Learn as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow."