In my first two months of trading, i started out with 80k. i was up 20k, now i am down 20k. I am going to take a long break and trade a lot smaller...How long did it take for you sucessful traders to become consistent with what you are doing? Also, in the beginning while you were learning, how big were the losses you first took?
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52060 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=80319 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=99283&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 GL BB
Expect minimum of one year of no gains and hopefully small losses. This also takes into account lots and lots of study and obervation. Also, you should be trading 1 lot of futs or 100 shares of stock until you find a consistent approach. Any more than that and you are asking for a mkt beatdown.
Although new traders are seemingly always motivated to find out how quickly someone else did something, at some point, they realize that what others do (or have done) is virtually irrelevant to their own success & learning curve. Everyone brings their own unique set of skills and motivations to the trading arena. They learn at different rates, have different biases, absorb information differently.... Some very successful traders took many years to 'make it'. Others had to lose everything (sometimes multiple times) before finding their way... What matters is how strongly you are driven to be successful. How much do you want it? R
One year is a minimum! If you want to trade for your livelihood (IOW fulltime), you are going to need probably 1-2 years of experiecne before you can expect to see consistent gains. You have to keep in mind that you need to learn just tons and tons of intraday patterns, sitautions to fully get a feel for what you are doing. Not to mention the concept of learning to keep emotions in check, maintaining discipline and so forth. Trading is a REAL serious business so you need to expect that its going to take some serious time and effort on your part to be in a position to make consistent gains.
How long does it take to become skilled at playing Chess? That's pretty much what trading is, a big Chess Game. Day trading is like Speed Chess Position trading is more like Regular Chess Longer term trading is like mailing your moves to your opponent through snail mail. The answer, of course, is subjective. It depending on you, your intelligence, how hard you work at it, your commiment and what you pick up from the old (and young) Masters along the way. Offhand, I'd say 3 to 5, give or take 6 months either way. Good trading, Jimmy Jam
Basically, a 40% drawdown (from a peak of 100K down to 60K if I understand you correctly) is way too much and your equity swing is an indication that your trading is based on luck rather than on a method with a systematic winning bias. If you do not understand the difference between random trades and consistent winning bias you are risking your full capital. Next time your drawdown maybe 50% or more. My suggestion is getting a good book on risk and money management and read it carefully. Good luck to you Ron
Oh boy, depends on so many things. What is your definition of trading? Trading retail with $25K? Trading with use of capital at a pro firm? Daytrading? Swing Trading with naked direction long or short? How many trades per day/week/month? Just as a reference: We find that it takes between 6-12 months for traders with a lot of training, discipline, and adequate capital, to get to "comfort level" where they understand and respond well to the markets (this is in general in our trading environment). Some never "get it" - some, of course, start out making money much sooner. $80K makes it tough to engage in many strategies, so I'm guessing you're trading retail, swing type, buying first vs. shorting. Let me know some more specifics and I can do my best to let you know what our experiences have been. Don
You do not want everyone to "get it" anyway, otherwise there would be no winners, prices would stay flat and you would be out of business. For every good trader you produce you must also produce 10 losers so the good one can become a winner. Ron
I don't really think it's that bad, although the retail success rate might indicate that. My feeling is that there are so many mutual funds and institutions that leave so much slippage out there (not concerned with quarters and such), that we can certainly do better than that with the traders willing to put in the time and effort. And, since equities aren't really a zero sum game (I know that topic has been beaten to death, LOL) because of upward bias and corporate earnings, that we can certainly have a positive expectency. But, I agree in this way...much like a poker game, the more tourists we can bring into town, the better the locals do. All the best, Don