You must make millions. Your tone is so condascending, I guess being a speed reader, hard worker, and expert programmer you can speak in that tone.
LOL... Yes, I am the greatest trader in the whole wide world and I am going to take over the world with all the money I am making!!! Buy my $1000 book and you can trade like a master trader that I am!!! Buy my $10,000 Black Box system for Wealth-Lab and Tradestation and you'll make money like me!!! I'm superior than all of you!!! LOL... just in case you didn't get it... just/kidding
You need an edge before you start trading. That's ultimately a pre-requisite in trading. Your paper trade the strategy and you confirm that it works. Just what Aphie is in right now. Then, what should you expect when real trading comes in? First thing is your emotional and psychological intensity. I've had heart problems when I first traded and all the extensive anxiety attacks you can imagine. I personally just hacked the thing and just went on. I knew emotions from trading were completely unrelated to how I trade so I just tried my best to ignore it. Still, I guess there's a gradual flow of adrenaline going and after the day is over I was very burnt out. Still, you get up every morning and put your self in the psychological rollercoaster. Now what about the technical stuff? Real trading is very intense and it makes your views toward trading more intense too. I've actually started to doubt my system when I got into losing streak and tried to throw my system away. I actually did throw my Gann Analysis part to the side and traded only the system. It was still hard because I still had a doubt in my mind whether the system will work or not, still I just had to stick to it. One thing great about real trading is that you look at the market more seriously and you get ideas while trading. I started getting ideas about the system and started finding flaws. I would take those ideas home and back-test them. If it makes the system better, I would include it in, if not, I'll just set it aside when I make another system. Another thing is it tends to bring the best out of you. If you make a mistake, it shows you. If you are doing the right thing, it shows you that too. I started seeing resistance at where a trendline would lie on. I put it on, and it seemed to work. I started using them, but I would use them as if I'm analyzing the market and that blew me up, so I started finding a more passive approach to it than how I would use it. I worked great. Gann Analysis started to add in gradually from there. Soon I started getting passive with a lot more things. My rollercoaster ride has become a smooth ride down the beach. The intensity still exists but I became more passive. It's a irony that you are detailed about creating an edge but passive when you trade it. The switch between them comes along the way. Personally, that's what I feel about finding your own style. You need to trade to find it but also you can't deny the process in which you got there by, from publications, computers, and etc.
You need an edge before you start trading. That's ultimately a pre-requisite in trading. Your paper trade the strategy and you confirm that it works. Amen. Too bad it's taken me so long to realize something that basic... BTW, finding an edge is no walk in the park, either.
I've mentioned about hard work with a direction. I'd like to give my 2 cents about it. I've actually had a time when I was lost. I was experimenting with Gann and it didn't take me anywhere. I was reading the Market Wizard but nothing really hit me. I didn't like my current situation. Then I got hold of Buzzy Schwartz's book. It starts off by mentioning about having a plan. Reading that actually was my second biggest step as myself as a trader.(1st step was starting trading) I wrote down what kind of a trader I wanted to be. First thing I wrote was becoming like Paul Tudor Jones but using Gann instead of Elliott. I also wrote becoming like Michael Marcus too. I actually wrote a model of my view of what an ideal trader was. To keep things breif, I wrote thing from how I would view the market like using Technicals, Fundamentals and Market Tone of the market to grasp the whole of the market(From Michael Marcus) and being a very risk conscient safe trader. I had a detailed view of what my ideal trader was able to do. Psychological and Technical details I wrote were very naive but the overall view was set. Then I looked at myself. I asked what I can do and what I couldn't compared to my ideal trader model. There was basically nothing except for my desire to become a successful trader. I wrote down steps I can take to achieve my change as a trader. My first phase was something like: 1. Learn more about technical and fundamental analysis. Try to find the relation between them. Try to find a way to grasp the best out of the 2 types of analysis into one. 2. Follow news by watching CNBC and see how the market is reacting to these news. 3. Understand what is risk, what is edge, what is it to be safe. 4. Why does Elliott lower PTJ's risk when he trades? It's brief but it was a step. I hit the books and grasped the concepts little by little and the more I knew, the more I got better and the ideal model of a trader got more realistic and detailed. It also changed dramatically along the course. I'm still striving to become a trader I want to be. I'm sure there are other ways to initially approach trading but this is my experience and I hope this helps.
Trading is a serious business. Comparatively, it's a very harsh business than other types of business. But it's the most fair business there is. It all comes down to how well you yourself trade. You lose because you yourself suck. You win because you yourself did the right thing. Still, even if you win or lose, it may not be a good or bad thing. You can make profits coincidentally with a trading mistake and lose even if you do the right thing. Still, it all comes down to what you are as trader. Still, I've had some fun moments in this business. You get to meet all these ego-maniacs that come and go. They make you laugh with the lack of grasp in reality and also makes you better from learning from they're mistakes. If you haven't noticed, I'm reading this based on Aphie revelation of looking into lessening Anxiety and Stress while trading. I'm not going to write about how Aphie was. I'm going to write about mistakes others have shown me which refreshed my discipline. First guy I'd like to talk about is G. He was in the 1st prop. firm I was in. I went in as the first 4 trader trainee at the firm and he came in as the 2nd phase of traders the firm hired. He sat next to me and my boss(who I'll write about later) wanted me to teach him how to use the trading software. It was actually the Hammer which is used in the Andover Equity trading.(Great Platform, just in case you wanted to know) Now I teach him what each keys were and taught him how to change charts (It was RealTick, general platform is good but as a system trader not so good...). Now it was time to teach him the analysis part. The firm actually forcibly required you trade a combination of: 1. 7-17 Moving Average 2. 7 Bar Fast and Slow %K(no %D) 3. 17 bar Moving Average, 1.8 Std. Dev. Bollinger band. 4. Candlestick charts. Now, right when I started he stopped me and told me he knew how to trade. He mentioned about doing a lot of studying and he didn't need any help with the analytics. He was looking at the 3 indicators and started yapping about how the indicators were well made and follows the market well. He actually tried to teach me how to use these indicators. Funny thing is that I have backtested almost every combination of the indicator and 95% of it didn't work. Well, he started trading under Hammer's Demo mode so that he can become compatible with the trading platform. I told him to start punching keys in without caring about the fake equity buying and shorting so that he can get a feel of reacting fast with keyboard. Still, he started trading based on his trading methodology. Well, the opening rush had ended by then and I was just tape reading the slow lunch time market with 100 lots trades. I was actually ignoring the firm's indicator and trading purely the TOS and NASDAQ LvL 2. My trades weren't going well and I was red at the time. Watching me going in and out of the trade and getting eaten by commission, he starts critisizing my trades. Well, that was actually fine because I was trying to getting the feel of trading discretionary. He goes on yapping and yapping. I would go down stairs to grab a Starbucks, then he would say, "Yeah, you should really take a break. You better take some time and center yourself." (LOL.... why do you think I'm trading 100 lots? Well, I was in the red so he was right in a way... LOL) Well, lucky for him, with a demo $50,000 account($1 million margin) he had 10000+ shares of some stock and was green a few thousand dollars open position(not much compared to the amount of shares open). He just sat at the desk sitting back, looking at how everyone was trading. He had this satisfying face with a little smirking. He was talking about how I had to know the market to trade and once you get it, it's easy... (I'm still not sure what he still meant by that... I'm not a genius like him). Soon, the market pace had picked up. The volitility had started to increase and I started trading regular share amount. After taking a few trades my equity had gone back to green(after commissions of course). I look next to me and his face was just pale. The market has gone against him and he had a large open position loss. By that time, I was tired of him so I said something sarcastic about the market going the way he suspects it to be. He actually liquidated the position and restarted the demo from a fresh new start.(It's just like a kid playing a video game... LOL) Well, I went through another wave of trades in another opportunity. He was talking to me while trading and started telling me that the P/E ratio is blah blah blah and that the market has to go his way. Some other guy listening to that asked him, what if it doesn't? and his answer was, "It's not going to happen and even if it does, there's something wrong with the market." Well, the trend was showing up but his P/E ratio thing?? was showing down. He kept on adding positions but eventually, the market closed and liquidated the loss. He had a major ego issue. Even with two busted demo accounts, he still kept saying the market was wrong. Personally, I don't feel sorry for the guy. It was actually funny looking at, how much the market was against him, he kept his ego and went against it. By the next day, he came to our office differently. He was more humble and started to observe and listen to others more. But few weeks later, once he got the hang of it in the demo. He got the ego back. When he went live from demo, he eventually lost the account and got fired. The last part actually wasn't so funny but the demo trading he did was....
That's a great post. I think if there is ever a profession that will force you to fix your personal problems and issues, it is trading. It is the only profession I know where you cannot BS your way through it -- like I did in college.
Aphie... You really think, it's a good post? Well, at least for you? You should maybe look at yourself and understand what you are doing... People just don't change.