Why can’t I trade market systems profitably…

I consider myself a relatively intelligent person and I know that to trade any sort of market  you need a system. I don’t have the experience to create my own system so for me the solution is to use one created by somebody else.

There are a whole raft of systems available to you as long as you are willing to make an investment up front for the material and then to put in some time applying what you learn. With any new system it is always advisable to paper trade or use a dummy account so that you understand things before actively committing your own funds.

All sounds terribly sensible and not that difficult to do. And this impression is reinforced by the many testimonials you see from complete newbies who with little trouble are raking in the cash. And yet for me it just doesn’t seem to work that well.

As soon as I get the course/manual/dvd’s I commit time to devouring the content in a bid to get myself up to speed as quickly as possible. In most cases the information you need is well explained and the steps to take make sense so it should follow that applying all of this new found knowledge should be a piece of cake. And yet somehow it never quite works out for me.

Did I suddenly hit one of the notorious bad patches that each system will inevitably suffer from? At least the majority of authors own up to the potential for losing runs so perhaps I’ve just hit one. But then again I still see updates that show others making money so that can’t be the answer.

Perhaps I’m being too ambitious or too cautious and ‘adapting’ the rules without admitting it to myself. This is another reason I could be failing.

Am I not focused enough and letting trades get away before I can react, there are other things that I need to do so perhaps I’m not concentrating enough? The whole idea of my using a system is so that I don’t have to watch the markets from dawn to dusk so I shouldn’t have too worry too much about getting distracted (or should I?).

As I’m sure you can tell from the ramblings above I’m not happy that my personal use of systems works that well. If anyone has any usable suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong I’d be more than happy to hear them.