Generally after drinking the tea, I think. I've seen people trying to do it before, with tea without milk, in a glass, but the subsequent movement of the tea can make for ambiguous results, that way, in contrast to the certainty and confidence of outcome one would otherwise expect. There are always some, but there's also a huge turnover of "losers": the ones around now are (largely) different people from the ones who were around a couple of years ago, and also (largely) different people from the ones who'll be around in two years' time. (Whether they're necessarily the "right people" for someone who wants to improve to want to associate with is a slightly different matter again.)
90% of traders fail because they don't want to improve. Imagine yourself becoming a pro golfer because of the price money: You'll never succeed. Most traders don't trade to improve, they trade for the money...I'd say 90% of them
Good point ... can't argue with that one, really! Are questions an acceptable holla? So, how have you got on during your 4-month learning-curve, so far? What kind of trading are you aiming to do? What's your background, in so far as any factors relevant to developing a trading skill-set are concerned?
Brief background: I was a +EV poker player for about 5 years up until roughly 2 years ago (mostly online, but some live) when I slowed down a lot, still played the occasional live games when they were good but due to liquidity issues within the online poker market (google poker black Friday) and the skill vs non-skill gap narrowing with so much educational material being sold as services by highly competent players (similar to the gurus that I have found since looking into trading, although i cant verify the trading gurus if they legit or not) it became harder and harder to grind out a decent win rate. Instead I realized maybe it was a change for something else and the industry shift was a good way to let "another factor" decide for me that I should take a break. I have always heard the correlation between trading and poker skill sets but never bothered about it thinking that the intelligence level was out of reach, 4 months ago stumbled upon some YouTube video where some penny stock guy (no prizes for guessing) was boasting about making heaps and having students so i looked into it heavily. Wasn't able to debunk the claims and the more i looked into trading the more I have become immersed in it, The learning curve has been enjoyable and the skill sets are exactly like poker just different terminology and different attributes (instead of 52 card combinations + human emotions, haven't figured out what the trading equivalent is yet still pretty fresh to all this), Anyway bankroll management, Risk to reward, sample size to determine skill level vs luck etc etc all goes on and is all the same in both art forms. I haven't decided yet what trading strategy is "mine" as I don't even know what the common ones are, I guess if id have to pick one the VWAP fades and reversals seem logical and id be comfortable learning those? Anyway I know how important it is even with BAD traders to be at-least talking on a free flowing basis live, it really does help ones development because you can gauge different perspectives on the same play. I plan on trading the US markets with day trading as the endgame goal but swing trading might be best for a novice? just don't like the idea of this gap down/up business if im holding something. Hope I have answered your questions, Didn't really want this to be a bio or anything but happy to answer any you have. Have nothing to hide and everything to learn!
Interesting, actually ... I'm glad I asked, now. I've played a little poker online, a while ago, but was a +EV player only in $5/$10 coolers/STT's, in which the standard's generally really awful, as you know ... and got bored with it quite quickly. I'm sure there's some degree of correlation between the skill-sets of poker and trading. (I strongly suspect there's much more correlation between the skill-sets of backgammon and trading, but that's another matter, and not always an uncontentious one.) I heard about what happened re the online sites and US players. Exactly so. And people who approach trading from the risk-management viewpoint with an instinctive affinity with the relevant probability/statistics are hugely ahead of "the crowd". I never know the answer to this (having very little real experience of swing-trading, myself: I've always been intraday-only). Have you got as far as trading on demo, yet?
$5/$10 requires good table selection now days, 2-3 buy-in swings per session for me were common so being stuck -$4k was never fun. I haven't done any demo trading yet although I am looking forward to paper trading so I can start making mistakes, Learning poker took me a long time as I fell for the glitz and glamour and the realities of what was required to beat the game didn't dawn on me early on until much later. Don't want to go down the same rabbit hole with trading, Still trying to determine what aspects should be studied and what should be taken with a grain of salt. How did you get started? Any advice you would give a "past you" when you were first starting out to save this newcomer the frustration of chasing his tail? Would love to live sweat a day trade session one time with someone although it seems disclosing results in trading isn't as open as I thought it would be. No idea why, cant be a privacy thing when sensitive information can always be censored out (Account numbers, etc)
The variance can be frightening, I know. This is a huge issue ... perhaps the issue, at the start - knowing whom to listen to and what to read. "Holla" if a little list of the books I found most useful, myself, out of everything I've read, will help. Atypically (i.e. in a way that may be of limited - if any - usefulness to anyone else) ... (a) By reading well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox trading textbooks, published by well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox publishers (i.e. "peer-reviewed" and "quality controlled") and avoiding internet "information"; (b) By getting in thousands of hours of screen-time after understanding all the basics of probability and statistics that any trader has to learn, to become profitable (so that my first 3 years' experience was genuinely 3 years' experience rather than the same one month's experience repeated 36 times over); (c) By remaining aware, at all times, that in a field of endeavour with a huge turnover of participants very few of whom ever achieve profitability, most of the readily available "information", and especially the apparent consensuses of opinion, are always far more likely to be misguided than helpful; (d) By having expert tuition available (from a successful family member in the trade); (e) By not trading with real money until I'd proven, repeatedly and exhaustively and exhaustingly, on demo accounts, that I could avoid the five classic mistakes of aspiring traders, which are ... Not having a genuine edge (for which a common reason is reliance on inadequate, defective or mistaken "information": aspiring traders quite commonly seek short-cuts, imagining that if they just copy something that "works", they'll be able to bypass most of the actually-required education and experience phases); 2. Confusing entry-methods with trading systems (for which a common reason is the deeply mistaken - but widely-held - impression that if one enters at a good time, everything else will somehow, magically "work out well" even without specifically considering trade-management subsequent to the entry- it won't); 3. Under-capitalisation (for which a common reason is a misguided belief-set about what's typically achievable and over what time-frame: most people significantly overestimate what they can achieve quickly and easily, while significantly underestimating what they could achieve slowly and with difficulty); 4. Excessive position-sizing (for which a common reason is just a general lack of statistical/probabilistic knowledge - most people aren't mathematically gifted, and it's really, really difficult to make a success of trading without some real understanding of the statistics and probabilities involved - at least this one shouldn't trouble you too much, as a +EV poker player ); 5. Lack of patience, discipline and "psychological aspects" (on which I'm far too Aspergerish to be able or willing to comment further, myself, as I happen to have more patience and discipline than almost anyone else - and nearly pathologically so!). Those five may also overlap, to some extent. I can't prove a word of it, needless to say, but I very strongly suspect that combinations of these five reasons, collectively, probably account for about 99% of all "aspiring trader failure".