Do u think Financial Firms would hire him? Absolutely not. Small Traders are in the state of denial of psychopath behavior. http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/index.php
Here is another interesting article: Beware: Psychos on the Street http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704900704576595111390774324.html MARTIN SAYS TRADERS lacking "emotional intelligence" are destined to fail. This seems counterintuitive, but the best traders are emotionally balancedâat least during market hours. He believes that problems arise because intelligent people have difficulty differentiating between self-esteem and intelligence. This might be why some have difficulty accepting losses. What Martin proposesâand many top traders do just thisâis learning to take losses. Ace Greenberg, the former head of Bear Stearns, is famous for his "sell discipline." He even had a rule at Bear Stearns that all losing stocks be sold by Friday's close. Why? Losses interfere with clear thought. Greenberg told his traders they could buy back the stock if they felt strongly. Mostly, they didn't. The most disciplined traders quickly limit losses. This is one reason why Greenberg survived Bear Stearns' failure. He had sold most of his stock when the price was rising. He is now vice chairman emeritus at JPMorgan. Not everyone is that disciplined. Martin says many traders wait for the markets "to come back," rather than admit having made a bad decision. He believes traders who lack an inner voice, one that lets them be wrong, turn unrealized losses into another's realized gains. Yet many unseasoned traders sell the winners and hold the losers. As Martin writes in his book, "That's like pulling your flowers and letting your weeds bloom." Like i said many times small traders, the minimum risk capital to start trading in the futures market is $500K, most recommended $5 million. On top of that, to day trade ES requires 1 contract per $100K. That will control emotion. More than 90% of small traders lose! They just lose!!
So? That does not necessarily make him a psychopath. Lots of applicants, most of whom are not insane, don't get hired by "Financial Firms." You want psychopathy? Unless this guy is seriously into performance art, he would probably qualify. Whatever the case may be, he is certainly having an episode: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wKAu2cP0aHM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Wow, those statements describe me very accurately. I can talk and have a lot of charm to ladies. I don't have empathy=I started killing small animals when I was 3, my parents told me. I certainly make decisions in my own interest=I always go to Racetrack to buy cheap gas instead of Shell. I chronically lie=I always tell the black receptionist she is pretty even though she is the most ugly creature I have ever seen. I have no remorse=I killed a burglar in my house years ago and feel good about it. I never take responsibilites for my actions=I served in the army and killed some civilians in Iraq, I said to myself: it was a war action. Shallow emotions=my smile is on the skin, not inside the flesh. Persistent focus on gratifying my own needs at the expense of others=I day trade and take others' money. Conning and manipulative behavior=I front-run my clients. My Wall Street colleagues are mostly like me=psychopaths. I wonder what test they took. emg, does Wall street use the test to hire psychopaths?
Captain, you are in this thread to find solace. So I will give it to you. Yes, there is a trading industry. They will sell you all manner of books, platforms, seminars, all kind of stuff. You are unhappy because you have not been able to get it done. What you have to do is navigate that minefield until you are satisfied that there is one indicator and one indicator alone. Price. What is even nicer about price is that it has no optimal settings. Price is going up, or it is going down. Now what you elect to do with this information is where the grail stuff starts. Every individual trader must find his own grail. Each traders grail will be different in interpretation, but similar in execution. There is a thread on here somewhere about position sizing being the grail, and there is a lot of truth to this. Emg is also correct in that it takes nice a chunk of capital to trade in the markets. You have to be correct about your risk. If you are taking trades and risking 20% of your capital, you are going to blow up. Only five bad trades and you are done. But 2% of risk means you have to get 50 more losers than winners at a 1:1 ratio. I have taken pips out of the market as I have typed this. It can be done Cap'n.
RCG. I'm afraid your're preaching to the coverted. Converted, that is, from the heresy of the Myth about leveraged retail derivatives trading and the fact that a snowball in hell has a greater chance of survival and to the light of acknowledgement and acceptence. Of course I now honestly believe that in the long run, be it two, five or ten years, when the sucker goes from pillar to post, having his balls kicked and head thumped innumerable time along the way that he will be worse off. Not only financially (in my case $30,000 and six years of my precious life) but also emotionally, psychologically and spiritually). I have been part of the Myth and even perpetuated it through false claims and lies. Why? Because like any other human being in our benighted culture (I'm a Brit but we share the same 'values' in the whole of western culture) I'm petrified of not being a 'success'. We delude ourselves and misinform others as we fear the truth. So the Myth goes on and to misquote, evil flourishes when good men do nothing. I'm not religious nor sentimental but I think this industry comes close to 'evil' in the harm it does to individuals and poorer societies generally. It is a very deep and wide issue and I honestly believe that no retail trader on this forum will 'succeed'. Institutional and smart money will flourish under certain conditions of course, for obvious reasons and I also now believe that much of the propaganda and myth is maintained by individuals working in the industry who proclaim to be small retail. We can never know, as the whole industry operates under strict secrecy (I know for a fact that employees have to sign non-disclosure agreements and we all know people are petfrifieid of litigation-another racket). As the late Christopher Hitchen's said, what does not have any substantiated evidence for existence (blind faith) can be similarly refuted without evidence. I have seen, like everybody else, absolutely no evidence to suggest even 5% of us suckers can make it pay in the long run. It's a myth and followed with blind faith, a true narcotic of insatiable desire.
RCG. Forgot to mention. All this stuff about 'price action' and percent risk return etc etc. Misses the point entirely. The system is DESIGNED' to extract wealth from weaker hands. 'Price' is just part of the design. It goes where you lose.
This well written post begs the question. If you believe all traders will fail, then why are you here? I am here because ET gave me all the seeds I needed to plant my crops. But, like farming, trading is a hell of a lot more than throwing seeds in the ground if you want an optimal yield. So I come here to argue with the knuckle draggers down in P&R, but I do make a point of reading the rest of the trading threads if they are not redundant. So, why are you here?
I'm here, as with all others, because I'm either hooked or a hooker. As my tail is not for sale, I'm the former: Hooked. Hence the thread title. I'm not free from the hook but I'm trading microlots and down only $30 so far this week. Are you here because you work for RCG (Rosenthall..). Are you a hooker, RCG? This thread will be my last postings on the site. But I'm not going just yet. I'm still waiting for some overwhelming evidence to debunk the Myth:eek: