I thought I had "made" it a number of times and I fell flat on my face. I ended up "making it" when I stopped thinking I had made it. You have to stay humble throughout your trading career if you ever want to "make it."
Try Google. Ever hear of it? You hear about them anecdotally as they occur. History's losers are often lost "into the ether"... especially true for market players. Try Victor Niederhoffer... or all of the hedge funds which went bust or closed up.
How would contacting the company called Google help? I'm more interested in stories about the average retail daytraders. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Niederhoffer: I guess this confirms there's something supernatural about the number 27.
No, this isn't true. People who make it initially are indeed lucky but if you're able to make it long term then you have developed the ability to adapt, which is the key. As an example, prior to 2007 the market was non-volatile and very trendy intra-day, which is where I spend most of my time. In this type of market I follow the move and use close stops. Fast forward a few months and the market went bipolar. Up, down, up down....in this type of market I trade counter to the move and scale in and out of positions with virtually no stop. I do place a stop but it is far away from the market and it's sole purpose is to prevent a disaster. 99.99% of my losses in this type of market are manual when I hit the trade out button. One of my primary strategies in this type of market is to enter counter positions where I know stops are placed. If the market puts in a hard low I would buy and when it goes below that low, where the stops are placed. Watch the spiders for blocks on an uptick and I'm long. Now I'm back to following the market with stops most of the time. Now here's the rub....even though we are in a non-volatile trending type market you will still find days where there is chop, which triggers my counter move strategy. The movement as the Dow has been challenging the April highs has been similar to what it was like in 2008 and 2009 but with much less intra-day volatility. In 2008 and 2009 I made 90% of my money in the first hour fading reactions to news. I just loved that 10am econ number. Nowadays, I make 90% of my money after the first hour. Currently, I have a number of algo's running that crunch data and tell me what kind of day to expect -- trend or chop? One thing I was track closely is T&S that execute on an uptick vs. a downtick. Another thing I watch is where price spends most of it's time - i.e. f-distributions and t-distributions. To wrap things up, you have to develop a strategy that virtually no one else is using and you have to develop a level of sophistication that is superior to the competition. The biggest assets I have are my ability to program and my knowledge about statistics. After that it's just a matter of analyzing data and having the ability to adapt, adapt, adapt.
To follow up on my earlier post, it's important to work the markets but much more important to work yourself. With that in mind, the best book I can recommend to accomplish that is: http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Zone-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288883921&sr=1-1 And for personal and spiritual growth (two <b>extremely</b> important ingredients in the recipe) I would recommend starting with this: http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288884061&sr=1-1 I have been asked to mentor many students and one of my requirements is to read Autobiography of a Yogi. Most refuse and all of them fail. It's a big mistake to underestimate the importance of personal growth and maturity.