I started trying system based trading that i had learned form other traders. I did not have much luck with that, even though I thought the people had good intentions on what they were teaching. One of the first methods I tried was the Bollinger Band squeeze fire, which was set up with both Bollinger Bands and Keltner Channels. I was basically told to trade the direction of the MACDs after a period of consolidation. This seemed to work some of the time but also left me getting stopped out on winning trades or taking huge losses when wrong. I was also told that trying one particular method of trading would be inadequate and be very difficult to be successful off of because there would be much more important information that would be left out. I then went on to try and trade based of the 200ma. I did pretty well with that, but seemed to be getting in trades to late. I then started trading based off breaking the 50ma in the direction of the 200ma. I would often get break outs the opposite way. That is when I started a more discretionary method of trading. At this point I had also gained a lot of experience. Of course risk management is always a major concern. I could make money if there was large movements in the market, but then I would lose my profits on sideways trending periods. A lack of self control is certainly a contributor towards those types of losses. Sideways trending markets tend to throw out a lot of false break out singles where you cant hit a good risk reward ratio, unless you have no risk and go straight into profits. I do get a lot of no risk or very little risk trades, if I stay focused. Still it is not as good a form of trading compared to getting the entire trend of the day. I still struggle with that, but if I continue to improve I dont see what will hold me back. Prior to getting into trading I was taking some personal development classes. Some of the philosophy taught were similar to a lot of what George Soros says. Soros talks about a conceptual frame work. He said this frame work is not about making money but about the relationship between thinking and reality. He also talked about imperfect understanding which may be why I failed at other trading methods. Soros also talks about a cognitive and a participating function. The cognitive function would be understanding the world that we live in, and the participating function would be to take advantage of it. These two function can interfere with each other. Here is a good article on the subject if you would like to read it. https://www.ft.com/content/0ca06172-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a