I think Eric just blew Samson up. This is why its hard to be nice on here. Eric came on and gave everyone his numbers and got challenged with bull. If I remember right Samson is barely a profitable day trader after buying all his systems. So why do you even buy systems or day trade if you pull 8% on the millions you already made long term trading? It makes no sense if itâs true. I am not trying to be mean so help me understand.
brokerboy Thank you for asking like a man rather then being stupid and thinking you know everything like so many other ET morons. The answer actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Because my Swing Trading is so simple 2 hours per day it gave me lots of freedom through the years to do many other things. I bought a lot of realestate and a few other business's (Staffing) and I actually tried my hand as a professional Poker player and BJ card counter for awhile. Anyways without getting to much into my personal life I sold my Staffing business and had a lot of free time on my hands so 2.5 years ago I tried to see if I could Daytrade. As many in here know I sucked at it for awhile but finally after 2.5 years I have got back the 150k that I put into it and I have actually decided NOT to continue with it. btw, look for me in the next WSOP ..... Thank You for being a man and just asking!
Hello: I don't post much anymore, but I did want to say thanks to you all. In my office, we print out threads like this one and post them on our bulletin board. At lunch, and after work, we all get together for beers in our patio and one of us reads the posts. No matter how bad our day has been as individuals, in a few minutes we are all laughing our asses off. Thanks, and please don't change a thing. Lefty
Norm, although most daytraders tend to believe there exist "consistently" profitable daytraders in the long term, there really doesn't appear to be very much evidence at all to confirm it. I think most daytraders hold that belief because (a) they themselves would one day like to be that "conistently profitable daytrader", and there would be little point in trying to be that daytrader if one didn't believe such daytraders already exist and (b) it seems "logical" that a daytrader should be able to make money consistently once he has "cracked" the system. But as for evidence, I haven't come across any, apart from assurances on message boards that "yes, I am a consistently profitable daytrader!", which must, unfortunately, be discounted, given people's propensity to bullshit. I'm not saying that consistently profitable daytraders don't exist (although that is my belief), only that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of substantiating evidence.
You sound alot like my finance professor in college who argued that the financial markets are efficient and can't be beat. What he failed to understand....I don't need to beat the market averages to make money as a day trader or a swing trader. I simply need to beat my cost of capital....and trade with leverage. And that is how I consistently make money as a trader. I have given you one theoretical edge.... If you really want to discover evidence that profitable day traders exist....may i suggest you broaden your search, and truely investigate for other edges. It also begs the question, "What is it going to take to prove to you that daytrading can and is profitable?"
Admitted, this thread is actually funny. Like a few others here I only come here for entertainment nowadays. I've given up on the "constructive-critical" contributive intentions a long time ago, as these simply seem misplaced and usually even unwelcome on ET. However, I'll try to make an exception today. How about the levels of aggression and accusation going on here? What about all those angry people playing down others? Most likely they are full of it themselves, because aggression is a consequence of frustration, which is a consequence of failure / incompetence. Thus, those people bashing others are actually truly exposing themselves. Successful people don't indulge in bashing others. Re-read this sentence a few times, it might even sink in. However, this is what creates the "funny effect" about threads like these, and so I won't just complain. I call this type of ET humour "sour stand-down irony", and in some rare cases it even gets sophisticated enough to be called dry satire. We need the black to make the white stand out. Why is this so? I think it's because of the ever-changing dynamics of the market and the many old clichees that keep sticking with the inflexible majority, which then comes here to release their anger missiles as a consequence of failure. Like someone mentioned "go with the flow" is an old clichee. Well sure it is. We don't have flow but in fact the exact opposite. We have largely bracketing intraday markets, so the truly successful people exploit volatility rather than directionality. The rest perish, and so it is. Get used to it. I love these markets just like the markets we had before. How about putting a few more hours into re-thinking and refining yourself and your approaches rather than wasting time flaming here? Go and do martial arts, knuckle a makiwara all day if you want to disperse anger. Meditate. Practice both mindfulness and mindlessness. All this is much more useful, because it doesn't lead to more anger, much unlike attacking others here, which only leads to more aggressive replies and more anger. And anger results in impulsive, destructive behaviour and failure. Always. Rest not on what you have. Always be your own best critic instead of wasting that precious energy to criticise everybody and everything, which leads to nothing. Be fair, and keep moving on your quest for self-improvement or you'll be left behind. And thus spake Darwin. Try finding peace with others and yourself, it will make you a happier, healthier and lastly much wiser, more popular and more attractive person. Have a great 2005 and may the force be with you. - S P.S: Yes there are consistently profitable day traders. Even today. And their success lies more in their attitudes than anything else.
It is not worth answering the post anymore. I think most of the guys posting are failed day traders and are looking for an excuse for why they failed. If you told them the secret to being profitable is believing it can be done they will only call you a fool. If you told them there is a big learning curve then they will ask how long. They will then tell you they did it that long and still failed. This is by far one of the hardest jobs in the world because you have to show up everyday with your best game. You have to fail a million times before you understand how to not fail a little better. You have to see the trade happen in your head before you do it. You have to make the trade sometimes with out conformation and then see if the conformation gets established. I am still young in this business but I improve every year and never had a down year. I also can tell you I noticed I always do my best when I am positive and believe in myself. You will find most people in life do things half hearted and never take fault. This is a business that weeds those people out very fast.