Absolute and total ignorance from the book writers and mentors. Trading is nothing like a business, it is indeed the opposite. RUN from associating or even reading words of those who deny this fact. They do not have your best interests at heart. For those who still don't get it-- read NYCHood posts very carefully.
Day trading is still viable if you know what you are doing. Failed traders are either under capitalised, have unrealistic expectations, or have no market edge, or no understanding of the draw downs that may occur even with a good system.. Day traders should be looking to make annual returns in the 20% to 100% range, instead most day traders are looking to make between 200% and 1000%. This also makes the game 10 times mentally harder than it should be, ie you will be more likely to lose discipline. As a day trader, risk at most 0.5% of your account on each trade. You can lose 10 times in a row and still be only down less than 5% in total. And make sure your average winner is bigger than your average loss, don't eat like a bird and shit like an elephant. And make sure you have a long term positive expectation trading method.
I think besides the fact you failed the information on what markets you traded and rough understanding of your approach to trading will help other people to make max out of this...
You can treat trading as a business when you treat it as science and not discretinary "art" which is pure gambling.
You should also add that daytrading is a zero-sum game and very much like poker where you only win where others lose. Aka your techniques need to be better than others.
Just read his past message posts...his own words. He traded stocks, used indicators (price moving averages) and talked rhetorically about gambling, gambled heavily, loaded up, stress, depression, suicide, dead end job, poor risk management, close friends giving insider trading info and so on...sometimes with CAPS on specific words. Also, read his commentary about specific stocks...there is something repetitive and troubling. These are insights into how he approached trading, what it felt like to him and his personal results. In my opinion, if trader psychology is an important aspect of your trading as it is too me...this is a history (year by year) of how things slowly begin to unravel...the highs and lows. It can be very helpful to keep some of us from making the same mistakes and to look for warning signs that it's time to step away from the business. Also, based upon his posting history, something dramatically changed for him after the end of 2010 because he was trading by end of December 30th 2010 via a commentary about him and a trading pal and then he suddenly starts talking about the negatives involving trading beginning first week of January 2011. Therefore, he's now been working construction since January 2011 ??? Regardless, very useful info for anyone to read that should consider prior to getting involved in day trading...it's one of the toughest games in town. Mark
True that. It's amazing that so many discretionary traders believe that their art gives them a perceived edge... While so many algo traders show that discretionary trades add nothing to their demonstrated edge.