Is trading easy?

At the risk of sounding arrogant... This question is more for the professionals like @Handle123 and maybe @Millionaire

It appears to me that I only lose money when I try and get too big for my britches. I am pretty much an expert now at nailing entries, even in this volatility. Maybe 1-3 good trades per day per asset is enough for me to be happy.

I'm just trying to figure out if the people who have been doing this for a while are at the point where they are no longer impressed by the difficulty of it and have accepted that they get what they get and don't try to go beyond that.

I used to think trading was hard, but what's actually hard is doing nothing for long periods of time, clicking a button, then doing nothing again.

 

I'm surprised you didn't mention me on that short list of professionals. It's been my dream since 2008....to be considered an Elite...kind of trader. An Elite trader, imagine being one,

Trading is Definitely not easy.
If it were easy....you'd see society all around you being happy, laughing, smiling, having the best clothes on, jewelry on, plastic surgery on, the best health and looks, the best cars and insurance....because hey, trading is easy and everyone is printing money.
Instead, you see angry zombies, cattle and sheep around -- and angry forum posters.

There's nothing wrong with deciding to go big with a trade. If it goes your way....you are considered a hero and a genius.
If it doesn't go your way...you are considered the biggest, dumbest, gambler ever.

I personally find each trade very difficult. On the surface, it looks like a breeze....walk in the park...procedure process. But actually doing it, in real time, is incredibly demanding and stressful. Trading is similar to playing a chess game, or racing in motorsport....each moment is relatively incredibly intense. It's never a casual, calm, moment in your mind.

Your mind, and psychology, is your own worse enemy in trading. Looking at past, hindsight, charts is easy. But for someone to place a trade, and think about it...a trader can truly turn manic.

But it's not all gloom and doom, it definitely can also get better as you progress,
Fill up my Cup, Mazel tov

 

Trading used to be very hard for me until I learned how to trade. It still isn't easy and I still have so much to learn but it's a lot better than it used to be. best of luck

 

I still think you are a GPT trained on YouTube trading channels but thanks for engaging

Exactly, the hard part is about the psychology. But once you feel you've mastered it, is it difficult?

For example, every morning I run my script which automates the stops, targets, sizing and my literal job is to click a button a couple of times a day. There is no psychology in it for me anymore, I know the numbers work, and I know that I am very good at picking the entries.

I'm not fully at the point where I say it's easy, but I'm starting to feel uneasy about thinking it might be.

 

I mean this with all due respect, but its only been in the past few weeks/months where you have been showing amazing and consistent returns. Your name here goes back 12 years. So does it become easy after 12 years?

You had previous journals which I guess didn't go too far, that is part of the learning curve. You also said just a few months ago that you found bracket orders and consider this to be a game changer. This leads me to believe that you truly did just finally hit your stride just now

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/taking-profit-way-too-early.366756/#post-5587966

I would also say that you have a huge edge because you're a programmer. This sort of stuff helps with testing strategies that guys just using charts have to either do manually with spreadsheets, or don't even do and just rely on their brain for proper memory. Having this skill I think really accelerates the learning curve.

On top of this, you have claimed to have done very well in your professional life, so being well capitalized is yet another huge advantage that others maybe don't have. You said you were offered in excess of a $500k salary, so with this type of backup plan, it is so much more likely that a trading career can be executed with a higher chance of success since the backup plan is solid.

So saying all this, I think its awesome that all the pieces have come together for you, but to call it easy with your long learning curve and advantages (even if they are things you worked hard for), is still rather short sighted.

 

How long have you been trading? How long have you felt that it is better than it used to be?

 

Your points about 12 years seem valid, but while my first posts go back years, I actually did not commit to trading until late 2019. So I would say my REAL trading career began then. 2 years then? That seems to fit what everyone else says... It takes 2 years.

I do not believe being a coder confers any edge, if anything, it hinders. I mean I spent god knows how much time developing some stupid bullshit system which I do not need. Could that have reduced my learning curve by 6 months? Honestly, tradingview and pine script are enough.

Yes, I have done very well professionally. I am lucky, no doubt, but I invested a lot of time into becoming really good at it. Being well capitalized is a gift and a curse.

Consider the discount broker: $500/ES contract.

You can fund an account with $10K and make $10K a month using 1 ES contract, probably going long only.

I don't need to be well capitalized for that. But I need to be a good trader. Being well capitalized means you can be a worse trader for longer.

I'm not saying I'd prefer to not be well capitalized, because I want to keep scaling up but I think being well capitalized when learning is actually a hindrance.

Great comment, hopefully I addressed your points from my perspective.

 

Been trading off and on for over 20 years. It was about 17 years ago I finally tailored a set of indicators and oscillators that best worked for me and then I incorporated the Fibonacci numbers. Using stop losses is important also. If anyone ever tells you that trading is easy, they're lying...

 

What is it that makes it hard? Is it the uncertainty?

 

But I think you are overlooking that everything you say only comes from experience of having done everything else that didn't work.

We have talked about being red pilled before. How many true alphas are there out there? Maybe a handful of thugs that truly don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and seem to get all the girls, but these guys don't last long or reach any level of success in other aspects of their life. Most alphas I think end up being red pilled at some point in their life and grow into the person they become through lots of error and lots of work.

Likewise, for a trader to say its easy means he has struggled for quite a while. I'm way past the 2 year mark, but I probably have deeper issues that others don't.

Your point about needing only 10k to trade 1 ES is completely valid, but only to the guy who has it all figured out. This would be the guy that can trade 50 contracts of course, but if you limit him to 1, he will still know what to do.

I've read many guys say that at later stages of their careers they switch to swing trading. An hour chart looks just like a 5 min or 1 min chart after all, and looking for support and resistance is all the same on different time frames. Then its just a matter of nailing your entries and setting your stops. Capturing a 10 point ES move on 1 min chart is just the same as a 100 point hourly chart, but clearly less work is involved with the hourly chart. But you only get to this level when you become comfortable with the huge swings in PnL and develop the rock hard skill of not exiting before target is reaching, and taking stop religiously. Or at the very least have an iron solid reason for why you're changing the plan.

But this sort of trading only comes from years of experience. Anything is easy when you know every step of what you are doing and are prepared for every single curve ball that will arise. But getting to this point is a very long journey.