Your exposure to profit also decreases trading if you do not hold overnight. View attachment 186735 [/QUOTE] So...just buy at the close and sell at the open?
In four decades, except for one of blaming others, and the other I never called it an addiction, all the others were a yes. When I was 18-21yo years I worked for a bookie, first rule was this is a business and if I play-treat it like a business, and I did. Life is a gamble, living and dying, whether your turn to die on battlefields or crossing the street, it is a gamble. Trading is definitely a gamble and changed my mind about this some years ago. But it has always been a business/hobby to me. In the losing years of learning a heavily margined commodity markets, I use to lie to myself often, trying to justify the losses. Till then, anything in my life I put effort into, had always succeeded and only now I was up against the worst enemy of my life-me. I have depression anyways, so whether waking up or flying a kite-it is what it is, so trading didn't help, but now I laugh so much at the real dumb ass things I was doing back then. Passion? Absolutely am passionate about getting better, even though I think I am pretty good now in trading, but always areas in which I could be better at, the difference is now I know my weaknesses and don't lie to myself. Now have few monster huge profitable trades that comes from very long term commodities, but generally I am a singles chartist scalper. But even when I played thousands of hands of Blackjack in Vegas back in the 80s, it was a business, I still play the ponies from time to time, am decent at reading the lines of a horse, how the horse acts just before the race, know the local jockeys, but it is a business. Even when I can line up a trade to have positive expectancy, it is still a gamble cause of the mountain of hours it took for me to get this far. Life does take twists and turns that are unexpectantly. I never expected at my age to develop great friends through trading either, John, John, and Xela, one John has saved my life twice as one is a physician, the other has saved me through laughter, and Xela has taught me you can live and do well with Aspergers. You never know...as life is a gamble, and trading is probabilities. If you are into baseball stats and chess and math, you might become a good trader. Go Cubbies.
I do all the studying and my wife makes all the money!! I read and read. I present different options to my wife for her Roth IRA. She finds these great stocks (growing common sense companies) while I do more covered calls...And get my great stocks called away. She finds gems (a small growing regional bank [great locations...Buyout candidate], a heart stent maker...Less heart bypasses, more stents now) and holds tight. I'm coming around to her train of thought more. If you bought it for the reasons you see, unless major changes, hold tight!! I think I should skip a few days in between making market moves. Less gamble and emotions...More Zen type of moves. Slowly chew on the moves...Less emotions.
In the learning phase it was hard work. Now it is the best job in the world (good money, always in holiday mode, freedom to work or not to work...) In the learning phase is was a necessary evil to become a daytrader. I never saw anybody building a career in any job without making errors. In the trading education an error costs money. If that is a problem for you: don't try to become a daytrader. And what about making 10-100K just sitting in your chair and watching the Mediterranean Sea or the Tuscan hills instead of watching the walls in a dull office from 9 to 5 for small money? I lost already over 10K in one day, but on average I make more than 10K every day now. So it was clearly worth the risk. A few years ago Elon Musk was negociating to sell Tesla to Google as Elon (Tesla) ran out of money. That was worse then lose 10K that you can afford to lose. I used the same way of funding that people use for starting any business. In my case it was money I could afford to lose. Don't remember anymore how a margin call feels as the only one I ever had was over a decade ago. As I make money every week, for several years already, I don't have to convince myself. Even if I would not make any money anymore I have enough to survive in a decent way for the rest of my life. From reading your question I see that: you failed or never even tried to become a daytrader. you are very negative or maybe even in a depression as you can only see negative things and even not once a positive thing. What you describe does not exist. Everything in life has a few positive and negative things. I meet already several people like you who have only negative opinions about certain things. They in general never succeed in anything in life. They only see the negative things and already give up before they even start. And their failure proofs then that life is negative. A self fulfilling prophesy. Maybe read something about self-distructing behavior and go in therapy.
From what I’ve seen and experienced - the more emotionally detached you are from a task or objective ( ie, day trading), then superior choices and decisions will be made.
You are totally missing the point of OP's post. It is not about benefits of being a trader or whether trading can be profitable for some. It is a zero (negative) sum game so by definition there will be losing traders no matter how hard they work at it. Do you realize that by taking i.e. 100 best traders in the world and putting them to trade/bet only against themselves, many of those trading "geniuses" would become a failed traders? OP is talking about making a hard assessment of oneself to distinguish facts from lies, trueness from naiveness. Trading is a very specific way of making money for a living and it is not for everyone. Reality check after years of unsuccessful trading is a very good and right thing to do. Just because someone can't make it in trading doesn't mean that person is a failure. I laugh anytime I hear motivational speeches, Tony Robins and other BS. Be positive, work hard, you can make it if you "really" want it, etc etc. Los Angeles is filled with thousands of wannabe actors that are bartending or waitering the tables, many of them working hard at acting and many with actual talent, yet for most stars will never align properly to change their fortunes. Who do you think is smarter? A fool "trying" till end of his time because he/she believed they can make it one day, or someone performing a reality check realizing he/she "failed at that" and it's time to move to something else. Just like everything in life it is a probability game. The lower the probability the higher the payout (and more "casualties").
For each seperate comment OP wrote I answered in relation to what he wrote. I think it clearly is about making or losing money. This is why the OP wrote everywhere about "losing": Continuously speaking about losses and borrowing money. He is projecting his personal experience on the entire world. It is clear that he cannot distinguish facts from lies, trueness from naiveness as he only has negative comments. You also have clearly problems to distinguish facts from lies, trueness from naiveness. In the markets everybody is trading against the market, never against one specific person, so that argument is nonsense. By making hypothetical statements you can "proof" anything. By using the word "IF" you already admit it is not a real but an imaginary example. If you need to use imagination as proof it shows you have no proof at all. And reality is that the 100 best traders in the world are rich and made money. Showing that your example is complete irrelevant. You might as well use the following argument: if an EMP bomb would be dropped on the US, all daytraders would lose money. It would be correct because there would be no electricity anymore in the entire US. Should you then never trade? Because you never know if and when this bomb will come.
I used very simple example so you could understand that in trading world, BY DEFINITION, there must be losers otherwise there would be no winners. Since you failed to grasp my message, I do not even expect that you understand one step further, that a person that failed at trading is not a failure as a person. To paraphrase Ed Seykota that said "everybody gets from the market what they want", seems that you've got from OP's (and mine) post what you wanted, that is reason to boast your performance, claim that you know it all and call other's failures. For any individual trader, it is of least importance of what the market objectively is or what is hypothetically possible in the markets in terms of (other's) performance. Your boasting is in fact a hypothetical meaningless example to them. What is truly important to each individual trader is what the market is subjectively to them and what kind of performance they are able to achieve (not you or anyone else). As a result, after a long enough period of trading, everyone should reassess their performance and make sure they are not lying to themselves misrepresenting the "subjective" (for lack of better word) facts. That honest reassessment should be a base to decide whether to pursue trading further or call it quits and maybe devote his/her life pursuing other opportunities which they may excel at. In fact trading seems to be a constant rediscovery of who you are truly, trying to separate facts from fiction. That is what OP's post is to me.