hey cookiemonsta88,
is there a difference between systems and tape reading? im confused.
depends, experienced traders who create systems, know the underlying market environment and how and why to use those systems. so those people know what they are doing, there is nothing wrong to use those systems.
but then some black box scammers use systems to curve fit data then present to you systems which have no edge in forward testing. these you want to avoid.
tape reading is about learning how to read price action and fundamentals, hence learning how to pulse the market, and understand what kind of mode or mood the market is in.
give you an example, a range based system only aims to capitalize on range bound market environment while a trend based system is only capitalizing on trending environments, some systems are hybridized. but experienced discretionary traders will be able to pulse the market properly and decide which system them think suits the current environment.
so by learning and having proper grounding knowledge of how proper trading is done, you can achieve 2 things, firstly, you avoid being scammed of your money, and second, you more often than not will know enough after learning for awhile, to produce a profitable edge for each type of market environment.
so systems is how a specific method of trading goes, whereas tape reading means trying to understand the market, in terms of price action, news, mood, and perhaps fundamental drivers.
and further into your journey to learn about trading, if you do learn a system, you may encounter systems which worked in the past but do not work now, because the edge in the system has eroded and has no more edge, and then when you can learn to readjust because of that, it means you have enough knowledge to become consistently profitable.
so the point would be learning how to craft an edge out from the markets. once you can learn how to learn from an ever changing market environment as well as craft a new edge from it, then you will be consistently profitable, or enough such that you can make a really really good living out of it.
but the learning curve can take as much as 4-5 years or even more if you have no mentor and have to trial and error your way through. some info takes alot of thinking and digging to derive.
if you do want to find a mentor, there probably are many experienced ones around, but the ones you want to find are those who properly explain why they do something, especially with respect to the market environment.
market environment is a topic which i don't see many courses cover but this one is essential if you want to make it as a trader.
give you an example regarding adjustment of trading methods.
last time if you compare 3 to 4 years ago, markets flow was better in forex, because last time not so much HFTs around, price action had a more normal ebb and flow to it, but these days, i recently saw some news where many banks also now use HFTs for their market making. and price action and flow of the markets is more different, market now produces a more bivariated volatility distribution, such that last time you see a very nice ebb and flow impulse pullback, now what you see is market range in a fairly tight range then suddenly explodes, thats because in the range, all the HFTs are holding the range, then when it breaks, they all leapfrog each other causing volatility to either be very small and very noisy or very large and is 1 straightline with lesser pullbacks.
so if this were the case, how would you adjust your trading strategy if last time you were used to buying pullbacks? there are many ways to answer it depending on what you feel comfortable with. you could go lower in timeframes to look at whats happening and trading that (called the race to zero), or you could change your entry method more towards momentum than pullbacks, or you could shift to higher timeframes and trade the pullbacks, as HFTs are basically scalpers, so they don't price in fundamental useful information, last time dealers do that by being willing to hold what other informed traders are holding and not holding for long what others are not willing to hold or are getting rid of, since they are middle man(can see flows), so since HFT not pricing in these info at a shorter timeframe, means higher timeframe may trend alot better.
and furthermore i do know that some books are certainly 'harder', in a sense, to read and comprehend compared to others. Hence i came here to seek personal advice from the many investors and traders alike for what have actually worked and helped them for a fact. 
