In your video, the first guy says he learned more in 2 days than he did in 10 years on Wall Street! Ken, if you want to make it believable then you need to tone that down a bit.
Exactly! I realized that during 80-90% time market is truly unpredictable and random. Most (amateur) traders cannot make any statistically significant wins. It’s a small win at best and often big losses in the worst case. Only 10-20% time market provides free money opportunities, on average once a week. I call it dumb trend day that almost everyone can see. Last week was quite interesting in that Tues, Thurs and Friday were like free money days. If we can correctly identify such days, even not from the beginning and only trade them accordingly it would be a winning strategy. Usually those are the days QQQ up or down > 1.5%.
Markets are easier than normal to trade at the moment. But no one knows how long these easier times will last. The Fed is raising rates, so hopefully trading will remain easier for a good while. Make hay while the sun shines..
I have been watching the market for 10 years. The 10% time on avg. is always there. I would say now is more like 20-30% time period due to the market volatility. Also, per the fractal nature of the stock market every day there’s a 10% time of easy trading on average. The question is whether one can identify and capture those daily opportunities. The biggest problem facing most traders is firstly the inability to identify that 10% time and secondly lack of patience waiting for it, and lastly the proper execution when it arrives.
There is an added difficulty that even if you don't lack patience and do proper execution every time. Sometimes even after 100 trades you might not be net profitable. It's the nature of the normal distribution curve. This is the reason why trading is so much harder than everything else. Even if you do everything right there are long periods when you wont make money. This doesn't apply to the markets we have been having recently. Things have been pretty good.
If you have proper risk management and discipline you should be profitable. That’s an example of the trading edge, so to speak. The profitable scheme may be 8 small losses and 2 big wins. Even though the win rate is only 20% but the combination of good risk mgmt and a true edge will make an ultimate winning strategy. That’s skewing the normal curve, which is for the whole trading population.
Risk management and discipline aren't the main issues. Your edge needs to really good to ensure you never have a losing year. eg. An edge with sharpe ratio of something like 2.5. Like the Rentec Medallion fund. If your Sharpe ratio is below 2.0 you will have lots of losing months and even some losing years, regardless of how perfect your Risk management and discipline are.
Yes, the key is how good your edge is. I see it as an ever improving process. For example, after 10 years of watching the market I can see the market relatively well for 10% of the time. In the future, it will grow to 20% and so on. I agree the risk management and discipline are just basic and essential requirements but not sufficient conditions for a consistent winning strategy. The edge is.