If someone is just starting out how are they going to make any money on 2% of nothing? What do you think, everybody inherits the funds we trade with? Maybe someday you will meet some traders that made there capital in the markets and you will see how ridiculous what you say sounds.
Good luck with that And no, I don't expect that most people will inherit the funds to trade with, I certainly did not. But, a lack of funds is not a reason to prey for a run of 7's. Brandon
I'm not sure the bull is back! Has Battataglia ever been bearish? Fear and greed drive the markets. Nice move off the Oct. bottoms but I don't think we're out of the woods yet. In any event there do seem to be more new traders lurking and jumping in the water.
After trading since 1996 I've found that for me to do okay I need to be adaptable and alter my trading methods as the markets dictate. I try to "listen" to what the market is telling me and trade accordingly. The past couple years scalping has been my best money maker, something I'd not have pursued 6-7 years ago.
Are you certain he's unable to make a living via trading? Personally, I don't care one way or the other. I've been a member of SI since 1996 and only recently started posting here on ET and Brandon has posted some good stuff both on SI and here. Seems like when someone has a service to market that they're guilty of whatever just by posting. If you don't want to read posts from certain peple then why not use the Ignore feature? Seems simple enough ...
If greendog believes that what BF says has no value, perhaps he'd be willing to impart his own wisdom.
If someone is undercapitalized then they probably shouldn't be trading actively. Rather, they should work at saving up enough capital to fund an account so that it's more than "nothing". Next, putting on successful trades is as much a part of the learning (i.e. confidence building) process as making "x" dollars. To your latter question ... I didn't inherit the funds I trade with. I worked to save money to have adequate capital to trade with. If you want something bad enough you work at it. To make a statement about inheriting funds seems a bit off the wall.
Brandon, I think this is good, solid information for new traders. However, I feel that you have left out an important subject that is always at the top of the list for new traders, and that is time-frame. From my own experience in the past, and from talking with others who have survived and prospered, my personal opinion is that it is a huge mistake for new traders to put so much emphasis on "day trading", where the odds are so strongly against success. I was interested to note this weekend in reading Elder's "Come into my trading room" that he also shares the opinion. Even studies done of trading rooms at the end of the last bull run showed clearly that those who took a longer term approach...position or swing trader...fared far better than the average daytrader or scalper. While I have no doubt that there are daytraders who are making good returns, it makes little sense to me for a new trader to jump into an environment where the learning and frustration curve is so much harder to overcome. So again, I think this is a subject that needs to be addressed for any new traders.
Interesting remark. If you have nothing in your account, you're not going to be trading anyway. Or have brokers started taking credit cards?
LOL. Might be like some mortgage companies I've heard of who finance MORE than 100% of the home sale price.