Let's face it. Trading is in the upper echelon of income earning positions. Not solely due to the unlimited earning potential, but the added factor of the earnings being based on the success of the trader themselves. Let's face it. Being the richest trader doesn't make you the smartest person in the world. But being the smartest trader means you ARE the RICHEST trader. Because all traders should be in this game to make money. soccer/football (not American football) players are the best athletes out there because of the statistics. More people watch and play soccer/football than any other sport. Almost more than all the other sports combined. This means the most people are trying for the static number of starting positions in professional football leagues. This is why i never had respect for the NBA because you had to be 6'6 to compete. All Star 6'2 NCAA players cant even get a bench spot in the NBA. The AVERAGE hight in the NBA is 6'6. That's why so many of those NBA dudes dont even have ball handling skills. Why? because such a small % of the population is taller than 6'4. Small pool of talent. Simple. Trading? Anyone with a few grand and an internet connection can trade. We are the alrgest talent pool in the world aside from BEING HUMAN. Doctors aspire to inventing new treatments and surgical techniques, engineers aspire to patent monster applications, it goes on. We in the investment/trading game aspire to achieve god-like CAGR's and Sharpe Ratios... so we not only achieve success in our profession, we also achieve success in the WORLD because we have made the most MONEY. Keep in mind, your moral perspective on the nature of money, good/evil, is irrelevant because of the statistical reality that since trading is the quickest way for a superior intelligence to make money, the majority of smart people will gravitate to this well-paying profession. So to consistently find a way to take money from all of these smart risk-takers every month means you are amongst the top 1/5/10%. And on. Excuse yourself if you are trading for zen or as a fallback. Some people are trading to make as much money as they can within a particular time frame. Trading is the epitome of compensation based on merit. Period. This is no excuse for abnormal behaviour and exploitative and masochistic excesses often exhibited by insanely successful traders. Morality is outside the scope of this post. I've been intensely competitive since a young guy. Played double A baseball in Ontario, Canada as a middle schooler, won a regional 110 hurdles championship as a highschooler in NJ, then went to a top school, worked good jobs at Fortune 50's for about 3 years and then went AWOL from the establishment. Traders are mercenaries within the veins of the Financial Systems nervous, blood and endocrine systems. Trader/Portfolio Manager/Investor... If you were a legit mad scientist. This would be the PERFECT fucking job. Aside from the standout individuals who climb to the top of mid to large size corporate organizations, traders round out the bulk of the raw mental ability within the human race. I could have been a doctor, but I don't have the stomach for buckets of blood, cadavers and screaming, tortured patients. I could have been an engineer but numbers for the sake of numbers (where's the money?) seemed like a waste of my time. This is where it's all at. For God's sakes I can retire between 35 and 40 and pursue a whole other profession. Whether it be law, medicine or the arts. And I'll have the money to make a significant impact. Face it. Traders are the top of the worker food chain with the smarts to enter and exist within the owner food chain.
Traders are the middle class, usually referred to as The Merchant Class. If you talk to a successful merchant, very few are motivated by money. But I agree, beginners luck can be quite exhilarating.
I could be wrong as markets have shown me I am not too bright, but I believe in the upper 1% of most professions, they make more money with much less risk. At some point the money are just numbers and for me I keep playing the game cause it is a unique puzzle that I like solving, it is like a pat on the back for coming out ahead. And yet cause so little of the public actually know what and why we do, we come to forums to pass the time with out favorite posters to spend little time with others who understand the grind of boredom.
Let's be clear. The goal of all serious career traders should be to make money as much and consistently as possible. For the type of traders who usually frequent this forum that means having a seriously profitable trading method/system that makes money for you on a regular basis. All the rest of you are still gambling with fluctuating odds. Who knows what type of personal circumstances have the greatest effect on trading success. We all know most people lose money. The membership of this forum turns over. Because many of us lose our ass and that shit hurts. It fucks up your life. I was here for the first time a long time ago (2006?) and then left after suffering my first of many devastating losses in the market. It's part of what allowed me to see the truth about trading. Trading today is like the priesthood of old, back in the middle ages, where you risked everything to be one of the most powerful (religion in those days, money today) people in the civilized world.
We're all just basically a bunch of monkeys who learned when to push the right buttons at the right time.
I think I'm making an assumption that trading is the most efficient way to make money. This is debatable, some would argue that actors incomes are more efficient, or athletes, but when you look at it on a energy/joules to dollars paerspective traders come out way ahead. This is murky, no need to dwell. Trading is where the smart minds go to make the smart money. We here o this forum are only a fraction of the entire risk-taking community. Don't forget that. And those are the guys on the other side of your trades.
Actually, its an issue more about money itself...involving how people wrap their self esteem to money. People tend to become sad, depress, less social, more moody, forgetful and so on when they get fired, when they get lay-off, when they don't pay their bills, when groceries get too high, when interest rates get to high, when their start up business fails, when they lose their wallet and anything else that involves loss of money... Doesn't matter if you're a trader, doctor, lawyer, dentist, real estate agent, police officer. As soon as you start losing money...it will impact your personality and life. Seriously, once in awhile you hear about some story about someone that became rich and they then give it all away to charity or some organization that needs money. That type of person that gives it all away...its a rare person that does not have any connections between whom they are as a person with or without money.