Love the link by the way... It reminds me about Hillary Clinton trades as a successful Cattle Futures trader that turned $1,000 into about $100,000 dollars in less than one year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_cattle_futures_controversy Her gains were 1 in 31 trillion according the the experts although she wasn't in Congress during those trades. Regardless, its tough to catch a member of Congress trading on inside information and the same is true for institutional trading firms that do it too. In contrast, us retailers will be front page news when caught doing such which is why I'm a little surprise by that link you posted...someone out there actually keeps statistics about such. I now wonder if they keep individual stats of each politician listed ? They must be also keeping individual statistics if they're able to keep that total statistics like that. Regardless, I think us retailers will know what to do with that info if given access to the fountain first...hopefully. Edit - I've now discover they actually keep stats on each individual...whoa. P.S. I went to college with one on that list...didn't even know he's done some trades but he knows I trade. Will give his wife a call to tease him a little. Not too much teasing. My teenager is thinking about going to military school in the U.S....if he stays on that path...I think I will need a letter from a congressman as a recommendation. wrbtrader
Of course you don't know when your strategy is going to make or lose money. You're almost asking the right question. It's not about the win rate but rather about the positive expectation of the strategy. If your strategy goes into a lengthy drawdown or even into a flat period, you need to know that it still has positive expectation to be able to rely on it. Given a certainty that your strategy still works, you can make allowances for drawdowns or flat periods (e.g. a Sharpe 2 strategy can have a 6 month drawdown or a flat period, but far less likely to have a losing year). For example, imagine that you found a recurrent arbitrage that, on average, takes 1-2 months to collapse but in the worse case scenario will have to held to expiration of the securities.
That would be me. I use stockcharts pretty much for my trading decisions. There are 1,000 ways to make monies in the stockmarket and as long as it works for you, why not?
If you can't make money with 100K then yeah sorry you can't make it. If you can't make $200 a day which is only 0.002% then it just aint for ya! No worries. You can still find a job in the investment field to earn around 6 figures eventually.
Best advice I have read for us mom & pop amateur retails. Get off the beaten path and OP can find his niche. It is foolish to think $100K is enough capital to trade for a living without a day job. Unless you are super good, you do not have enough cushions to compound your gains if you need all your profits to put food on the table. There are two groups of amateur traders among us. Group one traded on the side while holding a day job and one day quit day job to trade full time because we no longer needed our day job and could afford to trade without a side income. Group two quit their day job early, tried trading for a living from the get go. There are many within the ET community from both groups. But the odds are stacked against group two.
No worry, he knows what he is doing, routinely making 50% a year trading full time with $100K capital. However, it is kind of tough to live on $50K a year these days if you have to support a wife and kids.
Not sure what both of you are talking about or if you're just twisting my words for the sake of making an argument out of nothing. What is wrong with making $200 a day? Of course I wouldn't take that for granted because I was there at one point and was pretty damn proud of finally making it as a trader? What is wrong with making 0.002% a day when the market/stocks give directions in 2% in any direction on any given day? I'm sorry if someone has tried for 5/6 years and can't do this with 100K then I'll stand by what I say and he just can't do it and should move on. Uh sorry I didn't create an equation to factor in potential wife and kids and create a variance table or post multiple scenarios depending on the age of childs, number of childs, how lazy a wife is ETC, in order to establish a target income based on 100K in BP. I'll be sure to do that next time...
There is a surfeit of pessimism and doubt among elite traders; and a certain conceit as well. A conceit that expresses itself in a yearning to elevate one's own standing by stating a contrary opinion to that recently posted by someone else.
Mike: This goes back to our prior conversation. Given your beliefs (or should I say "doubts") about whether this is even possible means that you have no chance.