I would consider myself a trader but my experience is limited to trading mutual funds within my 401k. I have access to about 15 different funds but only use 2. Soon, the company I work for is going to change 401k plans and I will be able to have brokerage privileges similar to an IRA. I think I will succeed as a trader because I have in the past. I started 4.5 years ago and am up 580% including 89% in 2000 trading nothing but mutual funds in a 401k. In that time I had exactly one loosing quarter where I was down 4% and my largest draw down was 7%. The market is a wonderful equalizer. It has no idea how much education you have, what your training is, what color your skin is, what plumbing you have between your legs, or how ugly you are. The only thing the market cares about is the quality of your decisions. Confidence derived from a formal education or institutional training is a poor substitute for that which arises from performance.
By definition if you win consistently then you're a better trader than 80%, 95%, or whatever the number is. I've been profitable every year since 1985 so by definition I am a better trader than whatever the % of losers. While not a perfect predictor, if you're losing and you're not willing to change your thought process, you can expect to lose more in the future. I see trading as being in it's infancy...nowhere near mature. We're still closer to the days of picking gold nuggets up off the streets than having to go prospect for it. I have no trouble finding statistical anomolies with large edges. Someday the markets will become more efficient and edges will become smaller. We're not there yet and I don't see that happening in the next 10 years.
no, you are up against people who are experienced and dedicated. those two things are far more important than what you mentioned.
I agree...but the most important ingredient in a profitable trading recipe is money management. Regardless of any supposed edge, your strategy will always have losers. A very un-sexy topic yet the most important one that most newbie traders ignore.
Actually, it is my connection to God in a way, not that God is going to do the trading for me but every time I asked for guidance as to whether to pursue trading or not I got very definite answers to keep at it. It is a good career choice for me.
My thoughts exactly, I look back on what I thought I knew a year ago, and can't believe what I didn't understand but thought I did. However it makes me excited to think where my trading will be a year from now.
I'm impressed. Still I don't understand why some people still believing that trading is an IQ dependable activity. Likely, I don't understand why people get surprised by the statistics of 90% or 95% or whatever the numbers are. Fellows , are you professionals in another field ? Have you realized that those same numbers can be applied to any profession that requires a certain degree of skill ? How many professionals burn their eyes and brains in College, Masters , PHDs and then they have to work in something far from their speciality ? How many professionals are really completely successful , psychologically and financially speaking ? Trading is not different. We must go through the learning process, and we have to paid for our tuition and probably at the end we will not achieve it. If you go to college you must paid for your education (probably 20 to 60K yearly). You must dedicate 3, 4 , 5 or more years learning and paying for your learning, so how much money are we're speaking here, just to be a professional with not experience ? Is here where the trading business give us some advantages since your paying to learn and to get experience at the same time. Now your learning will depend on your dedication and discipline and your skill to manage your "tuition money" and make it last as long as you need to graduate yourself as a trader. My question is, why traders are surprised about realizing that we must give ourselves time and money to learn the trading business? Of course not everyone will be a successful trader but for Godsake, that happens in every profession or in every business, not just in trading.
Same here. Someone put up an article on ET a few months back... I wish I could remember more of the details.. but the jist is this: these folks did a study of trader's personalities. They looked for correlations between successful traders and personality traits. They found that most successful traders shared two traits: (1) they are obsessive-compulsive rule followers (2) they are conscientious people They also found a correlation between losing traders and "intelligence", in that many times intelligence got in the way. I think there are lots of intelligent folks who trade with a "prediction" paradigm rather than an "ambush" mentality. I also hear "every trade is statistically independent" and "random walk" a lot. All of these ideas, cornerstones of math, statistics, physics, and engineering, can get a trader into trouble.