I just discovered this thread, and I admit I have not looked at all the pages, so if someone has said this, please excuse me. Personally, I find it troubling to think this way as Girlpower outlines in her opening thread.....Simply just trade your system and set ups as accuratly as you can, regardless of you condition or average. This is a probabilities business. One might start the day and do real well in the AM and quit in the PM. But you might need those PM trades to balance out the average. So its just not to reach ones daily trading goal and quit for the day. It would be dangerous to place your trades with a variance in your mentality according to your "condition". For example...Well, I have done very well this AM...I can take wider stops now. I trade the ES and am competing with all the other traders out there for points (I prefer to think in points not dollars as Girlpower has correctly posted) What does my condition have to do with anything? Do those other traders no my condition? Does my condition effect price action? You see what I mean? One exception to thinking about your condition, might be a breakeven adjustment to an entry.....This does interfere with the natural movement of your velocity, momentum, and price action, as again the price does not know your breakeven. Mentally, breakeven trading removes much stress, but also can remove some profit. No I know I said this is a probabilities business...and when trading multiple contracts ans scaling out to a BE position is less stressfull and allowing the probabilities to be on your side at a certain point......but again it will effect your average. Your methodology should stand on its own feet and your confidence should be based in that. Now, my comments would not apply to multiple commodity trading as balancing several instruments who trade with different margins and price movements. Hedging, spreading, and balancing a portfolio of commodities is a whole other methodology and specialty. The overall portfolio risk is evaluated, not just the individual price movement of each individual instrument. Condition plays an important role in maintaing the % of return on the multiple commidity basket which is treated as one instrument. Ok ....enough said.....There is much more....but I don't want to read this whole thread to see if its covered. Michael B.
Dear Brother Candletrader, I don't see that AngryBull is struggling with anything. It seems that you are struggling with the points made in the recent posts on this thread. You are still vehemently defending a point that is nothing but your personal point of view, and you see it as gospel, with disregard of theorical probabilities, proof of the opposite (see Schwartz / Zanger), the fact that it is being done, and as well you are shortsightedly disregarding the factors of money velocity and general rules of finance that, at a certain stage heavily impact on continuation of performance, not to mention personal needs. Nobody can or if can, will, trade no matter what amount of contracts to hundreds of billions. Money is not everything and it isn't just being accumulated. It is spent, it is drawn on, it is invested in other sources, and it is in large parts forfeited to the tax department, just to name a few. Your notion is just as invalid as all the other personal attacks on this thread to those trying to be constructive and raise mental ceilings. You are doing exactly the same, just with a slightly more diiplomatic tone of voice. But your principle is exactly the same. You think you're the peak of performance out there (as previously stated) and that nobody can exceed you. This, as many a common assumption prevalent, is an opinion rather than fact, and should not under any circumstances be attempted to be promulgated in such an inhibitive way by somebody I considered most diplomatic and open to humility and fellowship. Obviously this issue is affecting you, possibly more than you realize. If you weren't getting insecure about the very integrity of your performance, then why would you keep coming back here, and to other related threads, just to repeatedly again and again make the same point? I hope you realize you are. To make my point clear, there is a very wise post from a fellow posted on this board, which you might not have internalized. However, the elements of truth throughout are significant. Have a look: Period. Get your head around it, brother. You are great, but there is a remote possibility you're not the greatest. Again, just a remote chance. AMEN. Simply said, simply true. I can share his words here, because I, just like him, am a former entrepreneur, too. Brother candle, your statements (regarding Bill Gates & your daily 1.5pts) are heavily contradictive, so condratictive that you're basically shovelling out your own grave. To help visualize what I mean, that is the fallacy you're trapped in vis-a-vis these performances, with all my brotherly love I now see no other way but to turn your own gun against you and accuse you of not being true to your performance. Yeah. Exactly right. I'm saying you're a liar brother candle, because I don't believe you're averaging 1.5 ES points per day! You see this is completely impossible! Because, if you did, given common ES margining assumption, you would turn only $100k into $5,584,059,449 (5.6 billion) in 5 years. Another year or two, and you're up to Bill Gates' net worth. But you're probably now way ahead of $100k, anyway, and you've probably traded for more than 5 years now. Now that's why you're a liar, because I don't believe you're worth $350 trillion yet. I might be wrong, but since this is more than the weekly turnover of the Nasdaq, AMEX and NYSE together, I take a bold bet you aren't. On the other hand, you could consider the points I brought in the first paragraph of this post, as well as those notions just brought by brothers AngryBull, Jack Hershey and others who are already firmly grasping the concepts On top of that, to make clear what I mean with the implications of money velocity and financial barriers, I will name a few on the way: -250 car limit (ES) -Pit brokerage trading losses once you step to SP (they'll rip up your tickets, bid you out, they'll generally do a lot of things that will make it at least harder for you to pushing 5,000 SP contracts 5 times a day - see "Pit Bull" by Schwartz - I mean it's all been written about folks!) -Liquidity issues on SP, as well as money velocity effect (try pushing 5,000 cars without moving the price like you can with 5 cars) - General market size. You can't be bigger than the market. Now you have to diversify. This will require more time, extra staff, extra problems, extra money leaks. Remember, you're getting institutional now, and money starts leaking everywhere. As soon as you delegate in any way, % performance inevitably sinks, unless your employees are all better traders than you (unlikely) as well as all of excellent, honest, ambitious, restless 15h-a-day and excellent teamworkers (very unlikely). I hope you're all getting clues now. These are just a few things to name, and the general ignorance towards these problems annoys me. When I hear people saying "none of the big funds can do that - how could a trader?", I just frown and make myself a coffee. Some people are so dumb it hurts. You tell them 100X why, and they still don't get it. Why can a high-velocity daytrader outperform $100m / 500m / 5bn funds? See abovementioned! I'm not going to explain all this again, so make sure you get it this time. Period. To reinforce brother AngryBull's very valid argument, I actually have a life, and I like to buy sportscars, computers, furniture and art. I do not reinvest all my money in more ES contracts. I have started trading with a reasonably small amount of money (as you'd imagine at my age, despite business past), I have built myself a nice enough lifestyle. I also have to support my ailing mother and other responsibilities. I would not have been able to do this with 1 ES point per day. It would have taken me years just to get there. I have not constantly reinvested all my profits, but I have a life, and I am quite happy. I do not drive a Lamborghini Murcielago, and I do not own the ($$$) house/property I live in solely. But the place is in one of the most expensive suburbs in Australia, beautiful, quiet, an oasis of peace to do my kata in the morning on the river backing my house. On the other side, there is a white sand beach. This costs money. I do not live extravagant, I only get what's necessary, such as tools, computers, art - as said. I avoid accumulating possessions, but life still is expensive, it's the way it is. I hope this entire expression of thought has benefited you in some way as to expand your thinking in terms of possibilities and that it hasn't affected our mutually respectful relationship as true brethren in one of the greatest and most fulfilling endeavours in the world, so limitless of upside potential, which, as I hope, you now realize. To everyone else here: You're the people I'm annoyed with. You know who. I couldn't believe all the junk written on here after just one day of my absence. This is why I compiled this post. I hope that the arguments in this post sink in a bit, so people stop exposing their own blank stupidity by bugging, insulting, etc, as has been done so much on this thread. Get mature, and get your head around common economics and numbers first, before you start making public announcements, not to mention critiques. I appreciate your efforts. My best Wishes and Compliments, ~The Scientist
It's hard to find any other businesses in the world would have a better potential than Jack's upcoming Coder book. If any, people wouldn't tell here. Very disappointing! Seriously!
A funny thing is we occassionally would look at some trading books without printing anything actually done, or even buy them although knowing not real-time evidences are provided. BTW, are there any books (potentially with the exception of Jack's one) supplying us any real-time evidences? Why we buy them?? Do they truly have any values in them??? How do we know they are practical???? Are these questions logical????? No clues!
Agree, many times I doubt some of the book writers (again with the exception of Jack) for their actual trading performance, even if they trade every day for long time.
Anyone here do swing trade (15, 30, 45, 60 min) es emini, account $50,000, stoploss 3 points? What is your success rate?
Great reply Bruce! OK, since I've just replied to and hopefully solved brother candletrader's fallacy regarding long term averages, I will also go in on this subject, in an attempt to solve this issue once and for all: 1) Financial affairs tend to be as private as possible. For REASONS. In most places in the world money affairs are handled under extreme discretion, for obvious reasons. Knowing people's financial affairs can make them a target in many different ways. For starters, financial "transparency" can mean you can be robbed (been there), mugged, hacked into (been there), defrauded (now that they know you they can set up anything and try to sell you anything - been there, too). The same applies if you're poor. Now you become a target to people who know you're poor and sell you "money making secrets", mortgage consolidation programs, debt busting bullshit, you know all that stuff. Poor people are just as much targets as rich people are. Even more so. All this said - Why would anybody want to disclose his net worth / earnings etc? Basically, anybody who has been wealthy or burdened with a valuable item or knowledge or whatever for a certain amount of time will have learned why financial discretion is crucial. We want to be safe. Money -A-L-W-A-Y-S- attracts trouble. If you handle it with lack of care, you're obviously yet inexperienced. Many many (probably most of all, after love) fables, wisdoms and sayings preach and reinforce that. As the saying goes: "If somebody with money meets somebody with experience, then soon the one with the experience will have the money, and the one with the money will have the experience." There's a lot of truth in this. But in order for the guy with experience to get the money, he first has to know that the guy with no experience has the money (and no experience). By not disclosing, you have already established wall #1. A german saying goes: "Was Ich nicht weiss, macht mich nicht heiss". - Meaning "What I don't know, doesn't make me hot / eager". This refers to a lot of things, and is often used in the context of money secrecy. I can really speak from experience here about the value of secrecy. I am a Jewellery Designer and used to carry extremely valuable amounts of Gold, Platinum and Gems around with me. The valuables were stored in the most crappy, torn apart, horrible looking box you could imagine. I'd walk around (home)with a bag with a pretty gem box in it. In my backpack it had lots of junk, rubbish and the named box. Anybody who would've robbed me would've taken the gem box. By the time they got to crack it up they'd discovered there's just rocks in there and not kiloes of gold, diamonds, sapphires. But this of course never happened. Because of secrecy. Abovementioned German wisdom applies. Most Jewellers do exactly the same. People don't know so they don't care. If you'd known the value of the stuff I used to carry around you'd fall off your chair and probably tried to rob me, too. People have no idea of the true value of a nice 3-carat diamond or 5-carat Royal Blue Ceylon Sapphire. And that is good so. Today, I can tell you this because my gemstone collection is well protected (bank etc). However, the same all applies to money, either way. Money = Potential trouble. Always remember that. 2) There is no reason for a trader (or anybody) to disclose your financial status. Particularly on a public internet board? You must be bloody kidding! Whoever doesn't get this into his head - go home. Stop coming here. You gotta get back to reality first. You've spent too much time online. This is cyberspace, folks. If you want to get involved in drive-by shootings or even become a personal target, just poop out personal information here and you'll be halfway there. Good luck to you. There is a reason why we have nicknames / handles here. Do you think I'd disclose my real name here? LOL! Now, how much further down the line of violating common sense even is disclosing personal financial information? LOL again! 3) What would anybody gain by publishing his statements here? Really only either of these: - Persistent Disbelievers / Critics (no matter how much proof, they'll try anyway) - Criminals (fault of your own stupidity) - Enemies (most people have enough already) - Stalkers (as seen on ET) - Fans (ask Michael Jackson if he wants more) I might have left some out, but I think this covers them all. Does anybody want any of these? Thank You. No further questions. 4) Who cares what you believe? Who gives a hoot! This is the most important one. People asking for i.e. financial statements on an internet board are idiots, and people who supply them are -gigantic- idiots. Why would you care how much I make? I suspect it is more your personal tendency to voyeurism than anything else. Your mission as an objective observer is to scrutinize the information available here and gain as much knowledge from it as possible. Your mission is to make the most out of it. Period. To believe what you wish is your responsibility solely. No representations are being made, so it's up to you. I don't care what you believe. If you believe I or anyone else makes no money - fine. I mean - I really really don't care, and I'm even glad because it's one less who'd potentially bother me. I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by trying to prove you wrong - right? Thank you very much. This should now be clear enough. 5) People who disclose personal or financial information do so for no other reasons but for expectations of additional financial or credibility gain, such as opening or enlarging a hedgefund or trying to sell something. - John Bollinger tells us about his returns because he's trying to get more people into his hedgefund. - Larry Williams tells us how great he is because he wants to sell us snake-oil / books. It's the common snake-oil-star-syndrome. Most of the others (that disclose despite not expecting additional returns from their disclosure) are IDIOTS. Period. They think it's a good idea for whatever reason, but chances are it will come back to haunt them. Most of those people have not grown up in rich families and no idea of what financial disclosure involves. Smart people don't disclose, they want a private, quiet life, make sure they don't meet a partner that just wants him / her for money and make sure their kids are safe from being hassled by people / friends / teachers or kidnapped for extortional purposes when they go to school. - Just to name two arguments. There are thousands more out there. 6) There are literally millions of people who made millions of dollars and are unknown to anybody. They're the happiest people. Wealth is one thing, privacy is yet another. To me: Happiness + Love + Privacy + Money = True Wealth. Period. Any compromises are compromises. Any of the 4 missing, and I'm not truly wealthy. That's why I gave up being a Designer - I wanted privacy. F*ck the money. I want to be able to go to a pub without every girl knowing who I am. Been there, hate that. The few people who made it big and despite all these crucial points wrote big books and made it public without any purposes of gain in money or credibility (oxymoron?) are people over 50 who have lived their life & career, have long married, have their family out of their house etc etc etc. They're "done" with their bit and now they want to become immortal by passing on invaluable anecdotes and knowledge, before they pass away. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but this is what i.e. my grandfather did, and it seems Jack Hershey for example is trying to do the same - to give something back after so much insight and experience. Paul Tudor Jones, Marty Schwartz - all the others fall under this category. Aged wizards. I appreciate your understanding of this very crucial issue. Don't talk about money! I may talk about how many points approximately I make on the ES if you ask me, but I sure won't tell you how many contracts. Just wrap your heads around this, people. Thank you. OK. I hope this really covers most of the issues, and I hope that this thread is now free from all the "financial proof" nonsense and that we can now go ahead in the thread's original purpose of lifting mental ceilings and self-fulfilling prohecies. All the Best and Compliments, ~The Scientist
I'm appreciating your encouragements, my dear brother. As you can see, I have made an effort to write 2 large replies to cover and demystify the 2 most prevalent and discussion-blocking issues floating around on this thread; Financial disclosure and cumulative trading returns. However, I always have to ensure that I come after diplomatic responsibilities as much as I can. As is quite obvious, brother candletrader is somewhat opposing you quite heavily, and I must ensure that I don't create parties and cause a general feud here. Therefore, I must admit that I agree with him (brother Candle) in the point that 4-5 points per day on the ES is indeed not a mediocre trading return that any trader could make, as stated by you. I know a trader who owns a CME seat and makes 6.31 pts per day, on top of that flipping 100-250 lots. However, this is exceptional performance. Note also that he doesn't trade everyday. He goes on holidays as soon as he's made $5m in each financial year and then goes back to work next year. So again - We could assume that even his returns wouldn't beat for example a consistent, 240-day trading 3-4 point trader. I have found that the general barrier for "2nd level" seems to be an average of 3-5 points. I know a few traders who make 3-5 points. Personally, I would still be a very mediocre trader by AB's standards, at least in my long-term averages. But I have sort of come out of my shell and am doing a lot of exchange with fellow traders in order to improve now. My current 'waypoint' is 5pts, but I think this might take a little. However, looking at some of Jack Hershey's stuff, I'm just grasping some completely new but valid concepts that might bring this treadmill out of whack altogether. I've made a lot of progress particularly over the last 2 months. I should mention that I was "stuck" for a while there, which is why I'm very active on this thread (the only thread now). I want to see how fellow traders do (it). Particularly, like many of us, I will be greatly looking forward to Jack's book. If you believe Jack, you should be able to average $70k a year per contract on the "first level" of his theories, which would be equivalent to an average of 5.8 pts per day, more than most of us can. On higher levels, this could be doubled, so his theory. Since he is going to publish proof soon, as well as a journal, I see no reason not to be interested in what he could do to even further improve our performance. Hang in for what's to come I say... People saying that 1 pt or whatever is hard to exceed are right in their own way, but they are on a different level. They hardly ever actually have their money in the market, (2-20% of the time) they take singular setups or use systems, do fewer trades and risk larger stops. There are many ways to extract money from the market. As previously stated - If I do a lot of scalping, my commissions alone would run up to the equivalent of 3.5 pts per day. Anything below 4 pts here would mean loss. Makes perfect sense. Again: 4-5 pts per day is not mediocre (for me). Would you like to mentor me? All the Best and Compliments, ~The Scientist
Baggerlord, You're full of sh*t. I never said "I can't post real-time picks from one of my 11 systems...". This is called miscontexting and it's a serious no-no in a forum community. If there's one thing I don't like it's when people put things in my mouth. I just checked the old post, so I'm damn sure, too. Do I always have to check every thread to see if some wacko is slandering me again? Don't creep up on me like this! Are you frustrated / envious? It looks a bit that way. Look at this, brother: - I have actually published a timeframe of my system (that was - the very day I posted it and a few days and even weeks prior to that), - I have shown more of the signals and system insights than I should have, considering the secrecy of the system background. - You can now (with a reasonable amount of brain and patience / fiddling) construct a similar kind of system. - I have shown the system's signals (as you see they worked) as well as the equity curve. - I have disclosed the secret to the consistent equity curve - 2-sided MM parameters (trailing loss-stops and profit stops) I think that altogether, this was more than generous, considering the amount of time I have put into developing those systems. I would say that you're very ungracious, to say the least. I shared something very internal, and you now attack me for it. That is anything but fair. If it upsets you - OK. Pass on. Because I don't really care if you believe me or not - I mean, what difference does it make to me? None. Let it go man. Never abuse a contributor for his efforts. Or I'll never post again. I thought you were diplomatic / smart enough to understand such basics of community behaviour. Regarding the top 1% of Mensa - Actually, it's the top 1% of the population. Which is all that is required to become a member. I think as of current that's only IQ 145 or so, meaning the average intelligence of about a 31-year old. I think you can beat that. Looking at the way you write, your achievements, such as trading profitably with $2k after a very short learning curve, winning WA State Chess Championships etc, I'll take a shot that you might actually qualify for Mensa! Just a few thoughts. I hope any of this made sense to you, and wish you a great day. Compliments, ~Scientist
Dear Alfonso, I thought I'm not gonna reply to anymore flamers / spammers today, but since you're bringing up some points and people request them to be discussed, I'll just elaborate some answers to your accusations, anyway. Well, that's your point. Mine is else. Believe whatever you like, you're a free mind, and at least you know your "bullshit point". Regarding consistently and long-term average - Well, I think that over the last 2-3 years, it would have been a lot more difficult to maintain that average than it was before that. So this is sort of confusing. LOL - Funny guy. Sure I've "ever placed a trade". 1.5pts as a mental barrier is implying the results of a certain class of approaches used by people. I'm not doubting that even the 1.5pt-a-day trader has 15-point days, but he trades differently to the trader that consistently makes 3X that. That very trader will hardly get over 15-point-days, either, but will have a lot more ie. microtrading opportunities to exploit. Regarding "reams of BS" - Well, you see that's your personal opinion again. It's very dangerous to confuse fact and opinion, not to mention call somebody who makes a sincere statement, true or not, a liar. This is not what a diplomatic person does, so in effect I have no respect for you, and would not expect you to be an exceptional performer in trading, either. You can believe it or not, just make sure you don't insult somebody without reason, particularly if it's not verified as truth, but opinion-based. A 15-year-old can get away with that, but any older and you'll get into trouble. Period. LOL. There are actually a few reading this thread that do. However, do you think under these circumstances they'd tell you? LOL ! I've cleared up and closed in on all this on today's post to candletrader. LOLOL! Do you think anybody, even the lamest traders would stop after 1.5 pts? Great way to make a long-term average of 0.1 pts. We're clearly talking long-term averages here. So you keep trading, keep trying to find better ways to trade, minimize losses, improve winners all the time - And still you never improve from your current average??? Not even after 5, 10, 20, 50 years (like Jack) ??? You'd still only average 1-5-2pts and not improve? This would be the only profession in the world then where you couldn't improve. Man you really are in a trap there. Don't keep trading, because now you can't improve anymore. Big slip here. The "bahahaha" immediately identifies the quality of your character, thinking level and language. Anybody who reads this will put you straight in the same shelf with FPC and the other various "bahahaha" people - We know who they are. To ridicule my girlfriend is the crown of it, really. What an immature, unappropriate and offensive behaviour! I take a keen shot she might already be a better trader than you - LOL! She grasps the concepts extremely quickly, she's really quite good. Many girls do actually seem to have an aptitude for it, and if you look at certain barriers the male trader faces (particularly the male ego), girls might actually be at an unfair advantage when it comes to learning to trade. I've seen girls trade, they don't seem to face those ego issues as much at all. Listen, "dude". Don't you think it would be better if you first took your gear and went away with your 1-pt buddies and stop insulting people who are trying to make contributions on a thread clearly intended to raise mental celings and alleviate self-fulfilling prophesies? I'm not telling anyone here how to do it. Never have. How to do it is up to you. Good Luck. Sorry if I came across as offensive here somewhere. Sure it all was in appropriate context, so don't make me some sort of convenient scapegoat! I appreciate your efforts. Compliments, ~Scientist P.S: This is it for me catching up for 2 days just on a single thread, folks. See you in a few days...