WHAT IS WITH SOME OF YOU PEOPLE?! THE ODDS OF ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING WORTH DOING ARE PROBABLY PRETTY SLIM. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, NOT DO ANYTHING?! IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS, YOU MUST TRY YOUR BEST AND NEVER QUIT...PERIOD! NOT QUITTING IS THE KEY. NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO, YOU WANT TO BE THE GUY WHO IS STILL GOING WHEN OTHERS WOULD HAVE QUIT. FOR EXAMPLE, SAY YOU JUST BLEW OUT YOUR ACCOUNT. YOU FEEL ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE, RIGHTFULLY SO. THAT WOULD BE THE DEATH BLOW TO A LOT OF PEOPLE. BUT YOU, HOWEVER, ARE GOING TO RECOGNIZE THIS AS JUST A TEST POINT AND MOVE FORWARD. THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES, BUT THE ONES WHO NEVER QUIT HAVE THE BEST SHOT. IT CERTAINLY AREN'T GOING TO BE THE QUITTERS THAT SUCCEED. YOU MUST TOTALLY CONVINCE YOURSELF THAT YOU ARE GOING TO REACH YOUR GOAL AND THAT IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU DO. ---> "Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth." - Bruce Lee <--- FRuiTY
..Good point. and.. we got your point fruity.. (but Was that font size nesscary?) my dog laying on the ground 24feet away can read this.
The more money you have, the less your trading expenses are percentage-wise relative to your trading capital. For anything less than 50-100k, it is gambling to me.
i often wonder how exactly those numbers, 90% fail trade, are studied. not that i doubt the often cited success rate, especially if they try and take into account anyone who has ever opened a brokerage account and lost moeny or clesed it, etc... would be tough to do such a comprehensive study and i never took the time to look at the methedology of any studies... but my only point is the 90% may be misleading, as the creator of this tread implies, that only 10% of people have the "raw talent" to eventually become a profitable trader... certainly many of the, lets just stick with the assumed 90%, COULD become profitable trades however they fail for various reasons: impatience, decide its not for them, lose their capital or were under-funded to begin with, or maybe just chose a different path, all before they had the time to become profitable. In other words, and although tough to quantify, i would posit that those who are adequately funded, put in at least 1-2 years, are reasonably intelligent, and are genuinely serious, with no other distractions, would experience a higher succes rate. This would explain why many prop firms claim 50% succes rates after a year or two, b/c they have a better somewhat screened pool of traders who are serious enough and capitalized. its in part a barriers of entry thing. to use the analogy many use, 90% of businesses fail in first year, for many of the same reasons as traders...but talk to any succesful business owner and they tried a business or two before findng one that works, so its not fair to say only 10% of people can or ever will become succesful business owners. personally i am progressing on a "typical" curve: lost my ass first year, break even during the second, slowly but surely have been growing profitable since, and i love it so i am not going to quit.
Bone: I trade against the market. I do not compete against you. I compete against a distillation of opinion regarding price that is captured in a moment in time. Very well said. To answer your question, Burger... I think I can do it because I think people are sheep in many ways and I've never been a follower. I form my own opinions. I also have a self-discipline that many seem to lack. That is what I focus on. Running Bare: It's an immutable fact that whether trading equities, futures etc u are trading against PEOPLE. (Isnt the market simply a collection of people?) Perhaps. Someone does have to be on the other side of the trade. But they are not my opponent. I don't score in their goal or basket. I don't necessarily take money from their wallet. They may in turn sell it to someone else for more than they paid. My opponent in most ways is myself. Can I stay within my limits? Will I get ahead of myself, confident, sloppy, tentative or careless? In a free market, I'm not really worried about finding a buyer, so the person on the other side of the trade doesn't concern me... not nearly as much as my ability to choose and time my action. André
The best trader I've ever known I met on the net and it turned out he lived a couple blocks away in a penthouse. He came from a lot of money, family is big in commercial, residential real estate. He had no market experience, we were at the same level learning about the mkt, T A, etc. We became friends and hung out on the phone all day while we traded. I had a couple of laptops so we started trading from his place and learning from each other. I would watch him take 10,000 shares of SDLI when it moved 20-50 points in a day. After a while I realized he employed two things that I didn't. #1: He had no fear of the money, losing a little, he always cut loses,or winning huge, no impact either way. I didn't say he didn't respect or desire the money, it just wasn't what counted. The game and winning it is what counted. If you can get to this point the mkt is an entirely different animal. #2: He only looked for the flaws in the play where I was always looking for the things that were right, glossing over those small flaws. If there are no flaws then it must be right. Maybe that's what Paul Tudor Jones meant when he said " the most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense"