Great post. Trading is simple. I am arguing for fun with some geeks in another thread who are in love with backtesting and programming systems. Trading is the simplest thing in life. It is so simple that any attempt to make it complicated will result in failure.
most profitable day traders make far more than that , most traders arn't profitable , having the humility to set modest targets doesn't mean you'll achieve them , chances are you'll make many times that or far more likley lose many times that
Ain't that the truth... Boredom is the hidden cancer of trading and that is why a numbers of traders have turned profitable days into losers... (me included at times)...and many a good trader has done it; exception being Trader Zones . Trading is not rocket science...with a modicum of commonsense, a simple system and the ability to TURN OFF the platform, results will improve significantly. I have a lot going on at present..so I do not spend as much time at the screen and that has been a major benefit to my trading results improving, statistically. Oh...did I find less "stress".....? NiN
Sure, If you really know what are you doing! You can easily get $300 - $500 per day, but does mean that you have to win every day.... And that could be a big mistake!!! You are not a perfect human or even an predictive robot, one day you will lose $300 - $500, or more than that. While you are trading actively you must to manage your risk, sometimes this task becomes stressfull.
Does anyone actually have any risk management skills on this board anymore? What are you risking for that $400/day with that $50,000? 99% of you have never and most likely will never have the game for futures markets. If this board is a reflection of the greater percentage of people that make up the market no wonder why so many fail. Take some time to understand why real money managers are in the game and you are not. You need to understand risk management.
AMEN! maybe for you, but it took me years to unlearn what the guru's taught me. In hind sight its simple.
Amen to the above. Let me add another variable most traders tend to overlook: it's not about %return on capital invested, but rather trading EFFICIENCY. If you have an efficient trading system that doesn't incur severe drawdowns, then capital is not an issue at all. All you need is enough money to meet margin requirements. Like you said, most traders don't believe it's possible to achieve such results because they don't have a winning strategy and, as a consequence, don't believe in themselves.
You are right, most people probably fail trading due to poor risk management, but risk and reward are also correlated. You probably fail to achieve high returns because you can't overcome your fear of the inevitable loss. Maybe if you understood risk management better you would make more money. Or maybe I've just been lucky making 20-30 trades a day for the past two years...who knows?