When I was in Chicago learning how to floor trade(which I never ended up doing), Mickey Hoffman used to tell everyone that it took a thousand trades to become a trader. Of course no one believed him. We just stood there with our mouths open like typical noobie traders. Anyway the number is higher.
Trying to learn trading is sort of like being a new recruit in the army and they give you a job stacking hand grenades and they tell you under no circumstances do you pull that pin. Teaching trading is like being the officer and you know as soon as your back is turned they're trying to figure out a way to try it out.
I was in the Army...never heard of anyone having a job or order to stack hand grenades. In contrast, I've seen a few with jobs to maintain accurate inventory of the weapons room...that store grenades. Grenades were never stacked as in touching each other. In contrast, I've seen "smoke grenades" stored in boxes with each grenade in individual compartments so that they did not touch each other and then the boxes were stacked on top of each other...no more than 3 boxes tall...same with other types of ammo. Maybe people were just more careful or nervous when storing grenades except for the smoke grenades. Yet, once on tour of the military in South Korea...I did see poor storage of several of their weapons rooms. Enough that it made me nervous to be within a 1/2 mile radius of these places. wrbtrader
What should I do if I double in less then 300 consecutive trades? 300 trades that's average 0.33% per trade??? I tested 1000 (day)trades and watched what the stats told me.
Perhaps the Porsche- in -the -lake scene from Risky Business would illustrate it better. That pretty much sums up my early career.
Be happy? If your position-sizing was appropriate, etc. ... but for myself I'd want to see the rest of the 300+ trades as well. The reason I mention a statistically significant number of trades in my description is simply to try to prompt people to realise that in the long run it's consistency that matters more than profit percentages. If I were investing in other people's trading, I'd want to see at least many hundreds of consecutive trades, and wouldn't be interested in someone who has quickly doubled an account, because I'd expect their position-sizing probably to be reckless. I'm more interested in looking at the size and frequency of their drawdowns. Many naive and inexperienced people approach trading from a perspective of how much they can make, and how quickly, rather than from a perspective of risk management, don't they?
Sure ... I hear you, of course. (It depends a little on what kind of trading they're doing, I suppose ... some people take only a small handful of trades per month, etc. Not my sort of trading, but there it is ...).
Most retail investors and traders are conditioned by snake oil salesmen at those seminars promising to teach you to trade and make millions to focus on how you can make as opposed to how much can you lose. You know these guys are bogus because they do not even give one trade setup at all. I asked one presenter in an online seminar and he said they only give out that information to paying members. Can you believe that BS? They do not know squat that is why! It does not matter how much you have in your account be it $1,000,000 or $20,000. If you do not have proper position sizing and risk management, you will blow up your account. My female doctor friend blew her account up multiple times and replenished it again and again. She has lost millions but, still hard headed and stubborn and will not make the needed changes. I feel bad for her but, she refuses to change. Just piling on the losses!