how can I be more clear?
I've traded the future's market for the past 5 yrs and on average have doubled my bank annually making about 70 trades per year. I use three different systems ( bought and payed for ) which all have mechanical rules for entering and exiting trades--thus eliminating virtually all analysis or input on my part--apart from touching a few keys on my computer. This takes no more than 10 minutes a day.
I am not a financial wizard, by any stretch of the imagination, but have gradually realized that the only systems that have any chance at all, over the long term, are " trend following " which force the investor into a passive mode of sitting on his investments and riding out the day to day noise of the market place. I haven't heard of too many successful " active " investors in my day, and am not too sure what you're talking about.
I learned my lesson with stocks years ago--the more active your participation in buying or selling them, the less your final return will be, as the subjective mind in you attempts to project results the way a horseplayer projects an overlay on a completely undeserving beast. The human mind is full of folly ( which it has yet to inform itself about )--and hence--THE LESS it participates in trying to interpret anything at all, the greater the chance that it may be stopped in its tracks by the truth someday--quite by accident. LOL.
Passivity in investing, IMO, is the only way to go--for it teaches one the antithesis of what we all think we need...which is...MORE. By God, we don't need more...we need...LESS--and it is the greedy person, who constantly THINKS he needs more, who ends up in a pit of quicksand of his own making which tells him, finally, that more is never enough. And this is the truth that he, stopped in his tracks, finally faces. The successful investor, on the other hand, trades less, and probably even, THINKS less about his investment--and thus, he lives and breathes more easily as a result.
I hate to say it friend, but at bottom, the erstwhile cardcounting blackjack player, has two dollar signs glued to the fronts of his eyeballs, and another two nailed to the back of the inside of his skull...because he is, afterall, the quintessential " active investor," who, whether he admits it or not, always has money on his mind ( at least while he's playing--it's unavoidable ) as he always plays within that arena where the great beast...GREED...is the overlay that is leaving the gate just as he was stuffing his bet through the clerks frikin cage...ka-ching!!...too late!!!
( And that horse's name was...NEVER ENOUGH...and he won going away. )