Specialising in certain instruments or markets?Over the years I've traded many markets e.g. commodities, metals, cryptos, forex and so on. For new traders the word 'instrument' means a particular chart in a market segment. So the US30 (Wall Street) would be one instrument under 'Indices'.
What I have observed is that certain instruments behave very differently to others on the same time frame. It's difficult to describe this in words on a page but I will attempt. Some instruments are more highly volatile, random, and seem to 'disobey' moving averages - whilst erratically 'obeying' some basic concepts such as trend lines, fibonaccis, support and resistance levels. But they're generally disobedient of any of the usual tools we may use.
GBPMXN, CADNOK, AUDJPY - are some of these. In general the so-called exotic pairs in forex 'do their own thing'. The instruments that follow oil prices are similar in the sort of disruptive behaviour. Similar for high powered shares like Amazon and Ulta. RSIs mean nothing to them. When the move they really move.
Some say this is just volatility. For sure it is.
But in studying many erratic instruments over a long time, I've come to appreciate that they have a kind of personality . The more I observe these charts the randomness of their behaviour becomes almost predictable in their individual patterns (though I do not predict anything in my trading).
GBPMXN and USDZAR for example fascinate me. There are many surprises and dangers with these. There are much larger losses and profits to be made though.
There are some instruments that travel for miles when they get moving on daily time frames.
Getting close to these instruments can bring advantages. I've heard of some traders trading only one instrument like the S&P500. They do nothing else and they say the make all their profits that way. There is a sort of common sense in that i.e. if they become experts at assessing movements of price in one instrument then they are at an advantage.
I reckon that it's like any other aspect of life, where some people get into a narrow area of expertise and do it very well. I once met a man who was a specialist at sharpening saws. That's all he did for 30 years. He did his job very well and was highly valued. I've read about some folk who only build one particular kind of engine in one model of car.
So what I'm getting at, is that sometimes instead of being a 'jack of all instruments', it may be advantageous to specialise in only a small handful or only one - and trading that those or that one very well. By analogy again, instead of hunting 10 different kinds of animals one can learn the behavioural characteristics of one or two and be good at hunting just those.
Perhaps I could call this kind of trading 'narrow band trading'.
I'm hoping that other Tradingview members can share their experiences or ideas on the above. Best wishes.
