New traders don't feed older traders, IMO this is one of the myth commonly told among traders at leats on ET, its B.S., in fact new traders are bad . The more traders there are the faster the opportunities get arbitraged away. What you want is a market with few competitors in your niche.
Trading is a zero-sum game when measured relative to a performance benchmark. Few competitors means less profits. If all competitors are professional and informed, nobody profits. This is so basic...
There is nothing wrong with that in principle. There is nothing wrong with choosing the best and saying I did that. Some people have greatly confused the minds of traders. Just like a few economists have confused the rest. Life depends on selection. There is nothing wrong with selection people. The average person makes about 500 to 1000 different selections a day, all between alternatives. I repeat: there is nothing wrong in selecting systems that performed the best. Most artists made many bad paintings before a masterpiece emerged. Most architects designed horrible structures before one that became famous. If you come up with 5 systems for hedge funds, 4 lose money but one makes a lot of money, you must be proud for that one that made a lot of money because normally none does. Think positively people. Altucher is trying to help you. His IQ is double than yours. Pls do not take this as an insult. It is a fact of life.
I am not quite what sure how you are using those terms... but you may be assuming there is no edge. But there is. People were still getting long as Paulson and everyone else with in home in florida saw the market collapsed. Soros made a couple billion on the real estate collapse. Wall streets profits were so drivien by the sale of mortgages there were billions of dollars to be made on the other side of the trade.
Where do people like you come from, I wonder. So his IQ is over 200, you tested him yourself? Actually if he picks the systems that performed well after the fact, that is "survivorship bias" and in fact makes his method invalid. That's like selecting AAPL today for a backtest in a long only trending system, if you can't see the fault in that method then his IQ really is double yours - and it doesn't mean his is higher than the average. His systems combined lost money, that is the whole point here. If an architect designs 4 buildings that collapse and kill hundreds; then makes 1 excellent building - he's still a horrible architect.
I think an issue that could possibly maybe be discussed intelligently (after all this is ET) is whether high frequency trading has made the market hyper efficient. Its possible to argue that daytraders can't make money because the machines are just too smart. I don't really buy this but obviously if your strategy is clicking a mouse faster than a colocated black box you may have a problem. I just think that people need to stop inferring some absolute from an anecdote. If you take the story of LTCM or ENRON you would conclude that smart people shouldn't allowed to trade at all....
in the long run,since trading began,people have always made money with charts and ta,your computers that are doing it now are just squeaking out the pennys and nickels on the micro in efficiency's,you dont need charts for that,just a lot of math,another technical analysis, the market still moves within chart parameters and always will,for the simple fact that one cannot know where all the other players are at without them,the sun rises each morning and the weather changes often but it's still collectively the weather
Even Robert Hoffman failed (blew up his account trading TF futures last year) but, ironically, he's still teaching peole how to "day trade for a living" for monthly subscriber fees.
Call me crazy, but I think Vishnu (J.A.) is onto something. Day trading for a living will eventually result in failure and burnout, and it doesn't produce anything valuable to society. It is likely only a matter of time before a day trader ultimately fails over the long haul. Is it possible that there is an exception out there (1 out of 1000 people)? I suppose, but most everyone will fail. Even the great Rob Hoffman blew up his account. (300K+ Lesson Learned!....poof!) I know it's true that most businesses fail, but I think it could be even worse for daytrading.