They are distinct from each other. Gamblers have different needs being fulfilled by the market - mainly emotional needs of validation, attachment, worry, excitement, despair, fear and hope among others.
unfortunately (or fortunately) it is ... as is any speculation (including gambling), all of which have probable outcome
Gamblers sound like women who keep boyfriends who are idiots, but keep them anyway. there is an uncontrollable desire for validation from an outside source, instead of from ones inner self.
Is experience at a prop firm required to be a successful retail trader? NO. One example, Ray Dalio. Basement hedge fund turned Bridgewater & many others. Successful trader = finding a strategy that you know your probability of winning and expected payoff of the win while being hedged risk of ruin. If you have positive expectation, you're good. (easy to calculate in blackjack, hard in options market, even harder in stock market).
Yes, but how do you find that strategy? I understand the idea of trading. Find a strategy that has higher than a 51% success rate, keep applying the strategy consistently with discipline and you will make money. But question is, how do you find that strategy? And another question is how do you test that strategy to have more than a 51% expected success rate since backtesting does not guarantee future results. Also Ray Dalio may have started in the basement but he had many jobs before he founded Bridgewater from his apartment. Here is a quote from his wiki: After completing his education, Dalio worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and traded commodity futures.[9] He later worked as the Director of Commodities at Dominick & Dominick LLC.[10] In 1974, he became a futures trader and broker at Shearson Hayden Stone.[9] In 1975, he founded investment management firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his apartment.
The answer for me won't be the answer for you, and the answer for another is most likely unique to that person's personality and fitness as a trader. The answer is hard work and self discovery. Trading profitably is the shire and we all must go through our own journey filled with hardship and disappointment before the destination is reached. And even then, you can still lose everything in one session, so complacency must not be tolerated. The answer to how you can do these things and accomplish your goals is to go out and do them. Fail often and limit the amplitude of failure to allow you to learn without going broke. Eventually failure will be offset by success and in that experience you will gain morsels of knowledge about yourself and your trading style that will enable you to take the next step. GL
The problem with most of the answers for me is that they are talking about the latter stages of trader development IMHO. I think one needs to think in stages. If your first stage is to be able to position yourself somewhere you can observe real traders making real money, I think it would be hugely beneficial. At the least, you should be able to make a distinction between BS/gambling and a real edge. I don't see many people on this forum mentioning how they got started and what helped them evolve into the traders they are now(understand it's personal). I will venture a guess that there are NO successful traders trading strategies that they developed on their own in a complete vacuum. Everything is a variation of something else they have learned from someone/somewhere. If you read Market Wizzards you can see they were all/most in the industry and/or had mentors(friends/family). IMHO It is very difficult, if not impossible, to figure out on your own if what you read online is BS or not.