You made a statement about your returns. I just wanted to see if you were full of shit ... or not. I suspect you are.
Ok, I will post it here just to prove to you I am a very good trader. It will just take a minute. I will rush.
ET is full of rude, insecure teenage boys. Is there a more mature forum out there? Please pm me if you can help me with this.
I know exactly what you mean. Let's see, this is what you posted: Altucher, are you sure you were not lying to your blog readers about trading? I think you were." That's mature? I thought you were rather rude and called you out a little teeny bit. You made a statement about your results. If your not willing to post them why even bring it up? Tell you what. I'll start. Tell me his original rules and I'll run that and post it and then you follow with perhaps your exits. Then I'll run one with a different exit and we'll go back and forth a few times and see how it goes. My results in will be excel format with all buys and sells showing. You in?
Interesting question !! Assuming none of this site members have met or talked to Soros personally, all the responses you will get would offer guesses of members - some wild and some informed. Let me take a chance. I have read Soros on Soros, Alchemy of Finance and listened to more than 10 videos of Soros on internet. In my view, his macro view and his deep understanding of global macroeconomics, geopolitics etc. is best bar none in this world. He is not your typical quant trader or a level II trader, rather he is in the league of foreseeing big moves (like 10-20 big figure moves in Euro for example and 70-100 point moves in S&Ps) over a short period of time (like few weeks to most often less than a year). More importantly, he always employs his reflexivity framework for analyzing situations and forming trading opportunities based on them. In short, he is the best macro trader and a great philosopher. Jim Rogers is probably the only other guy who comes close to him as far as sheer macro economic and geopolitical knowledge is concerned. Regarding front man - ofcourse being a smart trader and so influencial, he knows how to get impending central bank actions from his vast network and his shrewed conversations with officials from Central Bank all over the world. But its clear to everyone, when he started off in 1970s he won't have that kind of network - and its only foolish if anyone doubts his abilities.
James A. is a character with many funny/entertaining stories and I certainly can't fault him for being negative about day or swing trading. He's the kind of person who has had the experience of getting millions come his way rather quickly in other endeavors and that has to have an impact on one's ego when you try to trade and probably can't start so small as to have zero impact on your lifestyle if you fail. It simply wouldn't hold his interest long enough to *really* learn the ropes. A guy like James A. is never going to do what NoDoji (Donna) documented on ET. Take 1 CL contract, sim it for close to 1 year day after day to get the price action techniques down, taking 15-20 tick stops and looking for 20-100 tick gains. Then, go live and do the very same thing for another year before even considering increasing size. Even after all of that, he'd never be satisfied with making 200K-500K a year trading CL futures because, again, he's used to millions come his way already in other ways and he'd want to scale-up yet again and be the one swinging 100-200 ES contracts [even if it means trading lousy average daily ranges with chop galore like that contract offers up these days]. James, you're right. To be at the level of market trading you personally would enjoy being at is way, way harder to do than the above. You want to be at the big dog table, not the well fed scrap hound under it. Yes, you could be a successful daytrader in the futures market, but the annual income which would be most likely couldn't get your heartrate up to a decent pulse for you to feel alive for the effort given what you've already had come your way. My favorite line by James A. was when he was being interviewed by Aaron Task and Henry Blodget on the Yahoo Finance show. They asked him if he thought the recovery (at that time) was a V-shape or W-shape or U-shape or whatever. Without skipping a beat, he confidently said, "I think it's a checkmark!". Acting confidently about what you do or attempt to do is certainly a better approach than being a worry wart or pessimist. But, that's not to be confused with true confidence which comes from knowing and experiencing firsthand.