Hello newwurldmn, Correct, Bold Statements comes before the demonstration and after the demonstration. The bold statements must continue and the demonstration must always continue. In short, confidence is priority everyday. If can not recover drawdown, then no confidence. As I have said before, it makes no sense for me to participate in trading, if the goal is not to win and win big, and win quickly. These are just my beliefs, not meant for everyone in the trading business.
Hello taowave, My head is perfect. There is more than one way to trade this beautiful market. There is no right or wrong answers. I am simply stating my mind works with trading. It does not have to be applicable to your mindset of trading. I respect your mindset of trading as well.
To use your plane analogy, it will help if the beginner pilot can be the co-pilot and learn from a seasoned pilot. An open mind and willingness to learn is the key.
Paul Rotter in a 2015 interview said that due algo's he had become a mid to long term trader using smaller positions. Its amazing he did so well when he scalped with large size from the effect on the market. Seems like all of the big time wildly successful scalpers adapted to using smaller size with a longer holding time for winners after the rise of the algo's. https://www.mql5.com/en/blogs/post/10367
A more recent success story among scalpers would be Navinder Singh Sarao - dubbed the Flash Crash trader. A great read by the way. From what was shared in that book he also struggled in his later years scalping the market as it became increasingly difficult due to the rise of HFT. A low latency algorithmic fund here in Norway also had to shift towards a longer holding period as their edge disappeared after a year or two. I believe Marty Schwartz also said in an interview that he would not be able to day trade today's markets successfully like he did back in the day. Personally, I think scalping for a retail trader is mostly not worth pursuing as you'll generally need a very high win rate as your R/R is usually inverse. Most ain't able to maintain that high win rate consistently over a longer period of time. I had a good month both in April and March and my win rate was below 50 % for both months. The key for me is to always take my losses on small size and take them fast, but to ride my winners and add to them as the market moves in my favor.
I think a related question is "what is your definition of a professional trader". Years ago, I was an independent trader and only made mediocre money. I realized short term trading was not for me. I did develop several longer term strategies and traded one strategy for 19 years. Recently, I got back into trading and listened on the news, how 92% or so "Professional traders" don't beat the S&P over the long term. I said to myself, my equity curve has been a very nice 45 degree angle over 19 years, but I just beat the S&P over that period. However, after listening to that story, my benchmark, or my standards became lower, LOL, and realized I guess I did okay. However, my goal now is the beat the benchmark by a higher %. Taking a lot of work, don't know if I will get there. However, I have also been learning about portfolio management, risk control, position size, etc. I have also been incorporating these concepts into my trading. Hoping it pays off. However, for me, it would take a lot of money, to manage to think I could make enough money on trading to quit a job. The way some people make money in trading is to manage other people's money. Seems like a better job.. lol
Sure, for $5k can get you access to a fund platform for 3/6/9mths via mentoring (Stocks/Futures Mid-Timeframe but there's also Futures/Forex at LongTF/HFT plus Crypto but that's for long timeframe tracking not trading - seriously who does that) with algos that do 99% of the workload. Assuming you're a grad, the platform being designed to be net neutral meaning if you can't make profits you are either trying something new (learning) on a platform that is already designed to work or you are using it wrong, at which point if you can't follow the rules then trading/investing isn't for you. Or the other way, 10,000 hours with a neutral (losses equal profits ) at 5,000 hours, don't believe it try it and come back when you have quarters of consistent profits, it's funny was dealing with some crypto arb this week for fund and someone mentoring went away with some third party system being told that doesn't work, losses will equal profits. Anyway they got their third party system to work and funny enough, losses equaled profits, it's no different in trading and investing, once you work out how to offset losses to zero you have won half the battle, but you're still at zero, I was explaining it to our publisher (we have over 100 books in the 2023/24 pipeline from past written content). Today if you don't already have a foundation that works you can double those numbers, world dynamics post 2008/2018/2022 and who has 20,000 hours, but there is an alternative if that's too much, you can also reduce your profits from the benchmark 1-2% per month by 50% and hit it at 5,000/10,000 hours still, it's quite funny how it's working these days