Don't fall into the fallacy of hard work: you actually make money for waiting.

Discussion in 'Psychology' started by crgarcia, Feb 1, 2008.

  1. Hard work may work in corporate jobs, but not in the stock market.

    Statistics don't lie: 70% of people loses money in the stock market, for daytraders 95% lose, for scalpers the figure is as high as 98%.

    When its time to wait, you have to wait, there's no way around.

    Not everyday there are good trading opportunities.
     
  2. Acquire a broad knowledge base and WAIT for the bells and whistles to go off in your head. Something's not right here or something is just right. imo.
     
  3. dont

    dont

    I have always made more money sitting around doing nothing than busting a gut, over trading and over analyzing.

    But its human nature, you feel and think you are lazy. When in reality who knows why the market does what it does, we only sometimes find out afterwards.

    So why worry about it.

    I spend a significant amount of time ignoring peoples opinion and concentrating on the facts, which generally are few and far between.
     
  4. dozu888

    dozu888

    I can't agree more.... for intraday trend trading, it's hard to do when there is no set up on the longer time frame.

    when the market has a strong test/failure on the daily chart and confirms direction, intraday becomes much easier.
     
  5. I agree. I think you are best off if you patiently wait for that truly high probability winning trade.
     
  6. The margin of error in my trading favors being too late rather than too early on entry and being too early rather than too late on exit. And that is even more true with the volatility that we seen over last 9 months to the last year.
     
  7. newguy1

    newguy1

    wierd, i always figured scalpers were better off then a 98 percent failure rate since commish approaches zero with volume. (like if you're on a semi gross deal with commish at the cost of clearing)

    but yeah, if you're scalping on similar rates to regular daytrading, it'll be a chore.
     
  8. For scalping, commissions are proportionately higher, since you expect to catch only a small move.

    Lets suppose IB 1/2 cent commission, and the scalper expects to get 5 cents; commission is 5% of his goal.

    Now suppose a swing trader expects to get $1 profits, with the same 1/2 commission, it is only 0.5%
     
  9. You are obviously a lousy trader.
     
  10. On the contrary, everyday there are good trading opportunities. You just need to find it so I will have to agree with the poster above me, you're just a lousy trader.
     
    #10     Feb 3, 2008