ET Greatest Hits

Kensho · Sep 8, 2006

There has to be like over a million posts on this site. 99% of them make no impression at all. But there are those that are simply hilarious, or insightful, or informative more than all the others. Post them here.

Kensho · Sep 8, 2006

Quote from gnome:

Market lore is rife with stories of how some really successful player blew out. One of my favorites is about some guy who hadn't had a single losing trade in 20 years. WOW.

I followed his calls in the early '80s. His strategy was to have enough $$ in the account to handle a multiple of 5 futures contracts and to average in to overbought and oversold... playing the parameter, "the market has never extended [___] amount into overbought/oversold before".

In 1985, he started averaging into shorts. Market continued to go against him to such a degree that when he finally had to stop out, and using $100,000 as a reference:
a. 100% of all profits were lost
b. 100% of all original capital was lost
c. There was a margin call for $75,000.

In other words... after having this strategy work for 20 years, he blew everybody up in ONE trade.

I think this type of thing is a risk for the apparently super-successful. Hubris eventually makes them take ever larger risks until one time the market catches them BIG.
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Kensho · Sep 8, 2006

Quote from FasterPussycat:

Does anyone else find trading so freaking easy that you're bored? I DO! Trading is so freaking easy once you get it right that I might quit for the simple reason I'm freaking bored doing it! Does anyone else have this prob?? Too Easy & Too B-O=R-I-N-G. Watch screen, Click this, click that, make $$$$ , ho hum {{YAWN}} I need more excitement than this, mental challenge or I will go crazy. I could train a freaking monkey to do this for god sakes
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ET Greatest Hits

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