"from your mouth to god's ear." it’s not .......... that is hurting you, it’s your own expectations. fill in the box. you hit on one of the great truths of life.
I know this is a post about day trading. As far as my long term in commodities, this is very true statements, but in actually it is lower than 20%, more like between 5-15%. When I did it manually, you really appreciate what you can do in scalping Indexes cause my long term, it like constant of breakeven or small wins/losses for much of the time in months and sometimes even years in some markets. No you don't, but you have to study and define risk management, you stop competing against Hedge funds and make it a self competition, you become highly knowledgeable on hedging and not just options, sometimes you have to use stock options or stocks themselves to hedge various commodities as they lack options. Like I got short Lumber and waiting to add to my shorts, without the hedges it be playing with fire. And yes, I agree with positive expectancy, but mine is way different than most, I have zero caring about winning percentages and just concentrate on finding ways to have as low as I can go regarding losing percentages and amount of drawdowns. I lost feelings a LONG time ago, and it not about being right, it is about how to seldom lose money in LONG TERM and degree scalping/day trading. I don't go to many parties and most people would see me as part of the staff for the party, LOL And the 9 "losses" don't have to be losses, but they not winners either, some you make peanut money, for the trades where you lose peanut money. Sometimes Long term you have to take 24 different signals and last one is the huge winner/add on another 15 trades for ride down or sometimes can be several years of peanut money like Eurodollars. But I do attend some parties and I love discussing my 6% wins some years in commodity trading, but people assume it is 94% losses, and peanut money is usually fees or less than $50 and for long term trading, people buy fancy drinks and pay more than that each week. And my losing percentages(more than $50) are usually close to my winning percentages, and the risk to reward is very difficult to compute and I won't go into more than that, but some trades do have zero possibility to lose, and I am exploring this much more as I have time. Worst was 23 non fully winning trades, 24th paid off. Scalping/day trading, no one would believe what can be done when you live trading systems, and not going to be baited, stopped caring about most people long ago. I thoroughly enjoy your responses, you are one of few I look forward to read, @Xela as well and a dozen others. Yes, am too stupid, but also as stupid to make less than 10% losses, LOL. Made my day on this one. Have spent much time trying to make this work and all became too much losing percentages I can endure. My lonely day trading system has similar numbers, seldom get full losses, most losses occur on reversals and those are seldom as well, only took me over 3 decades to design a method I could endure. Half my automation are scalping systems of small profits, and as day progresses, less volume, but when you follow many instruments, really hard to have losing day cause of diversification, only problem is running out of capital allotments and this is where losing days come. If there are three full losses and since all systems average down, if happens in in trading Indexes or Financials, losses be larger and strict rules on percentage of allotment will not allow to over ride, will get 1-6 weeks to recover in that instruments. If never use averaging down technique, be very hard to have losing days, but where would be the fun in that? You of all people should know why. Ninety percentage who come to this forum and others are retail and most never understand or in small parts components , or dollar amounts I make are so small they would lose, hedge funds don't concern me cause most would never say my style matches what they are doing, vendors are very interested as they will sell one copy and before long it on the Internet and large traders would fully understand and then much harder to compete. You want meat? Put in sixteen hours a day for a decade, oh wait, you have other things to do in your life, so did I and I decide to work hard and smart, find very talented people to do what you don't like doing. I been in the Business since Carter was President, long term, never have meet one trader over ten years with winning percentages for short term to be under 40%, all crashed and burned eventually. I don't understand much about life but have lived it to the hilt, people tell me. What is normal to most of you, I rely on probabilities on how to respond whether in person or here. Recently have a name for what I have is Asperger's Syndrome. I have no concept of money nor time nor love, but when I hear USA National Anthem-tears form for comrades that have died in line of duty, I will never walk away from trading till I am satisfied of losing gets as close to zero as possible. And have no wife nor can have kids, am a freak of nature. But I do like the man I have become. Wish all to have a profitable day. Off for more testing.
I don't know the exact percentage...80/20 sounds reasonable... but what usually happens is that when you catch a good "pop"... maybe 5x or more of your usual profit... it occurs (1) infrequently, and (2) quickly in time. The rest of the time you're "in the grind" hoping to be there for the pops. A good trader is one who (1) accumulates decent gains during "grind-out*" times, (2) catches some bigger moves occasionally, and (3) protects capital at all times. (Excusing a 50% drawdown for any rationale is not protecting capital.) *What is "grind-out"? You make enough profit so that you feel it alone was worth the effort you made without catching lots of big winners.... we all want/hope to do that. Doesn't mean we will.
I was rewatching Star Trek on Hulu the other day. Then I had a thought that vulcan sounds like asperger's. So I looked it up. Turns out I was write. Now when I think of Asperger's I think of Vulcans.
This is certainly fairly appropriate for some Aspies. I'm not sure of the extent to which it's an accurate generalization, though: the reality is probably more that there are almost as many "Aspie personality-types" as there are Aspies (and I've certainly seen Professor Baron-Cohen - widely regarded as the "world expert" - saying something very like that).
i think most of these chat room operators make money by herding followers into pre-selected thinly traded stocks and then dumping all over them as soon as a they( the promoters) show a profit and/or by collecting subscription fees.
win rate, loss rate, expectations,... lets rephrase it: the problem for most trader's - they have no working method nada...