Thank you. I am old and you are correct. The sound of the pits is not unfamiliar to me. I never got used to not hanging in for the ride. The new stuff they have invented is nicer.(minis). I have adapted and the liquidity is something that really helps. For stocks I am used to either paying (fees) annually (quarterly in advance) with a surcharge being at a fairly large dollar base volume or at boutiques using the trading desk directly and throwing bones (I quadruple in winners and am allowed to just pay paper on losers). My base reference is what I make it mutually with a principal as well. They do not want to impede me and there are customs that are very gracious. It may not be too good an idea to take what I suggest without giving it the modern once over. I cannot be a young person in my perspective but I do recognize that it is very important for young people to skip a lot of mistakes asap. Scalpers of long ago were something to avoid; that's why my bracket suggestions are so conservative and why I do the stop logs to keep track of those buzzards. Oh well, aged old me...lol
I'm adding much more white space. Your subconscious is getting the invisible ink part. Sharks have, on their foreheads, electromagnetic field sensors that pick up radiation from ionically charged muscular movement. Adding more and more sensory systems to making money, is very helpful. If we get to financial analysis around here that will help too.
Bundle, no offence taken. In fact, I've read some of your other posts and I'm very much in agreement with you. I take exception, however, to your saying I "WILL BE STUCK", if it's with respect to my belief that 1.5ESpt/day average is ONE HELL of a performance. I don't consider it a "limiting belief" in the slightest; on the contrary, quite a liberating one! I would also take some exception to your saying that my opinion that 1.5pt/day has little or no basis to 'fact'. Well, if we are to consider the long run averages of all the world's ES traders, and rank them in order from best to worst, 1.5pt/day would surely rank somewhere near the top. If you disagree with this, then I ask you, ask I ask all who claim otherwise, to please present some evidence of this. So, if we can accept that when reviewing the performances of ES traders, those who rank near the top of the list surely deserve to have said about them that they put in "One Hell of a performance", no? Just to repeat, my statement wasn't based on what I consider POSSIBLE, but on what many years of trading results have shown. So I think it was a fair call. Please note, I am aware of the nature of beliefs and I am aware that everything I have expressed in this post is but a belief and I'm aware that I filter my every experience through my belief system. Having said that, if you wish to say that YOU believe that MY beliefs regarding trading are far too limiting or wrong or whatever, that's up to you. I would consider such somewhat fanciful; akin to suggesting that simply because it's possible for a person to amass 1.5trillion dollars in wealth in this world, that we must all adopt the belief that we, ourselves, will do so.
Okay, let's discuss that. I look at this issue quite differently to you. Here's the question you suggest the enterprising newbie asks: ""I am thinking of starting to trade ES (insert any instrument's you like here), and have $x available to do this. What kind of average daily return can I expect to achieve?" If we're to be honest, the reasonable answer to that question is that, good sir, you can expect to achieve the glorious result of losing the following: your entire trading capital, any notion of a good night's sleep, 30lb weight, your friends, your wife. (Ok, going a bit far, but you get the point.) Now, the way you've chosen to answer that question is the answer that I would give to "what do the most successful ES traders make?". Although, I disagree with you on just how much of a delimiting factor your answer would be on the prospective trader's mindset. You seem to be suggesting that simply because you answered "1pt a day", that this person will simply then, as a result, go ahead and realize the long run result of 1pt a day. Or that if you had, instead, told him 4pt/day, he would then go ahead and realize that. I don't think it follows at all that simply because you told someone he can expect Xpts/day that he will actually be able to do it. In reality, the most likely result will be that he will lose all his money. So, what you're really talking about is the effect that the answer to what he can "expect" to achieve affects and limits the successful trader. But even there, once a person has actually become successful, he would have a far better idea about what he considers possible for the future than what someone once told him before he began trading. So the whole direction of this questioning, I think, is simply too far removed from reality. With respect to successful trading results, I'd like to reiterate on a point made by Candle. What myself and Alfonso are getting at is that we don't 'expect' anything in particular, per se, from the market, so there are no mental ceilings on daily performance... That's really far more representative of what goes on in the mind of a trader, I think. (Not what goes on in the mind of a prospective trader -- that's something else entirely.) But for a trader, it's the current trade, the current day, the present time, that is the focus of attention. It's about trying to extract from the market all that you can using all that you know about price action, risk, reward, money management, etc. It's not about "expecting" anything from the market, it's about taking what's available according to your best understanding of what is occurring. I can understand that if one believes that a long run average of 2pt/day is the best that one can expect, and when you review your performance, you find you've been averaging 3pt/day for the past year, that then, yes, pyschologically, subconcsiously, certain behaviors may emerge that begin degrading trading performance. However, I'm not speaking about Candle here, but I am inclined to believe he thinks the same as me about this, the belief that 2pt/day is all that is possible is not really THAT much of an iron-clad belief that our world would be absolutely rocked if we found either ourselves or someone else achieving better than that. Far from it. Really, it's just an expression of opinion about what constitutes good trading. Calling it a "limiting belief" gives it far too much significance than it deserves. EDIT A couple of other points. I believe a lot of the newer traders take offence at 1.5pt/day because it runs against the BIG DREAMS they had about trading, probably influenced by whichever YourTradingDreamsComeTrue.Com chat room they joined. And with respect to "limiting beliefs" in general, I think expressing an opinion that 1.5pt/day is crackerjack trading is quite different to a "limiting belief" that no way, under no circumstances can a man run a mile in under 4 minutes. The four minute mile is a one time event; you run it, time it and you either did it or didn't. The limiting belief bears direct relationship to the event at hand. The 1.5pt/day is indirect. It is the cumulative result of many, many individual events -- trades. So if the "limiting belief" does not affect the individual trades, then, as I said earlier, its effect on the long run average is either non-existant, or so insignificant, that there is little point at all in calling the 'belief' of "1.5pt/day is a great trading performance" a "limiting belief".
Thanks Jack. I firmly believe we all learn something useful and valuable from each other, sooner or later, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
As you are improving your writing so much and so fast, I have dropped my silly old idea of developing a lucrative business of Decoder manual for your Coder book. Dare you!!
Oh never mind - I'm sure you can think of another useful business venture in due course... Best Natalie
Very well said, Candle. It appears you are currently in a well-established position. Its associated performance benchmark do challenge many of us. When one day we reach the level of your current performance, you may well have already advanced to another much higher performance level that we may never reach in our life. It's just a never finished race. Who on earth would like this game? Why?