Have you ever blown up your trading account?

the 95% stat comes from the cboe where a first time seat leaser or owner would blow out within the span of the 1st year ,there isn't a famous highwater mark follow up story on how many of those traders went on to succeed after re capitalizing

 

I don't know if the options traders are any more sophisticated than their stock or futures counterparts even though its complex nature is without a parallel. Also the options market has a much lower entry barrier considering that it doesn't require much upfront fees as with stocks or futures. I'm not saying this has anything to do with the failure rate, but it's been proven that the lower the barrier the higher the competition, and hence the higher the rate of failure. Haven't we all heard and latched onto the myth of a 90% failure rate for the restaurant industry?

 

I am sure it was more than balanced by the number of people who blew up AFTER their first year...

 

I certainly feel it's possible to be good at systems and bad at discretionary trading. I think I'm in that category - a good system trader, but only a modest discretionary trader. It's not that I don't spot some good discretionary stuff. It's just that the rate at which I spot it is too low - I couldn't get much return off it without huge positions and risk. Whereas my system stuff I feel is much better from a risk/reward point of view.

 

If you blow up your first 5 million USD, you should have learned a thing or two...

 

It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you lose

 

Sure did then I learned the most important thing in trading.

Unless you can find relatively "No heat" entries you got no business trading.

No Heat

 

How many traders have a net to catch their fall?

I think I understand the ultimate lesson this thread is attempting to teach.

NEVER risk it all.

 

if you open an acct with 5k, and u are learning to walk,baby steps, you still fall, the net would be 1 lot mistakes won't wipe out your acct or net,u should actually keep a sim acct after going live and trade both, a lot of experienced traders will use a sim acct to trade products they are still unfamiliar with, i havn't found the time but i want to learn how to trade currencies and i will start out on sim,it's a great tool

 

true. I am much smarter than some 40-50 year olds on these boards! For a 20-year old I am a genius. Some people don't even realize that there's more to life than daytrading. I believe I will be much smarter when im 30.