Steps to Become a Master Trader

Discussion in 'Risk Management' started by Raleigh Lee, Jan 15, 2013.

  1. Be emotionally / financially ready for the worst case scenario: Not taking money from markets for an extended period of time.
     
    #21     Mar 9, 2013
  2. dom993

    dom993

    Have an edge and execute flawlessly.


    The 1st part is obvious but very much underestimated (rather, most are over-estimating their edge, or just assuming they have one).

    The 2nd part is an absolute necessity. Execution errors take a large toll on the bottom-line.


    I develop & trade automated systems as I am convinced this is the best solution to address those 2 requirements. It is probably impossible to replicate the style & level of profitability of a successful discretionary trader, on the other hand it scales much better (# markets & # of systems / setups) than what a discretionary trader can achieve (talking about day-trading here).
     
    #22     Mar 12, 2013
  3. ammo

    ammo

    no such thing as a master trader, become a master at losing, then learn how not to, everything you make from then on you keep
     
    #23     Mar 13, 2013
  4. This is a hindsight comment. Sort of like: "If I had it to do all over."

    1. Start in stocks and position trade until your weekly commissions equal your salary. Keep your job two years longer.

    2. Train your broker to work for you. Or in today's markets arrange to make your own trades to the trading desk.

    3. Never bet or use OODA. Never take risks. The routine is Monitor, Analyze, Decide, Act. The most common acts are: WAIT and HOLD.

    4. Use bar charts and indicators with fixed signals. Later add 10 to 12 leading indicators of price.

    5. Log bar-by-bar where every bar has a name. (This is true of volume bars AND price bars). Use highlights fully and annotate completely.

    6. Begin to trade with the minimum of capital for round lots and for contracts. Sweep your profits from accounts weekly to remove ALL of your intial capital. Then let accounts grow.

    7. Make a one pager(criteria, filters, formulae, rules and strategy) for each market application. Go from independent variable to dependent variable only.

    8. After the one pager's are complete, you are taking the full offer of the market. For stocks only trade long (enter/exit) with a quality Universe (7 way filter). For commodities have a neutral bias (Hold/reverse). All in (94%) All the time (RTH)

    8. Give away new found money and time to some extent steadily; help sove local problems.

    9. Iteratively refine your apps (Use "BF or BS" refinement rules.)

    10. Learn more and faster by helping others do what you do.

    Those are the steps for building wealth. It is best to have a mentor. Mentors do not cost money because they are investing in you so you can help others.

    Below are common mistakes and myths:

    The market is always correct. It has no flaws. no noise or no anomalies.

    There is no way to predict and prediction is not necessary.

    Never use probability. The market is binary AND the measures are vectors and NOT scalors. The mathematics of markets is Boolean Algebra. Therefore, True and false or pass or fail are what the names of results become. This is all finite mathematics.

    The independent variable in a market is volume. The dependent variable is price.

    Time is NOT a variable BUT events are the horizontal axis.

    50% of the bars in a day cannot be measured. For those bars, the measure's name is WAIT.

    Markets operate in systems. 5 OOE's are entwined so as to form a trunk. In your mind this is found as a spectrum and the spectrum is fully differentiated. Given a comprehensive coding system this mental capability can be transferred to code to become an ATS.

    Performance.

    Because there is not competition in trading, the performance standard is "taking the full offer of the market". After you choose your trading fractal, measure the offer of the market on that fractal. That is your performance objective.

    The above is based upon 55 years of trading so far.

    Mostly everyone fails to perform as a trader. This will not change any time soon. If you are involved in trading, you can score yourself and why you are going to fail using this post.
     
    #24     Mar 13, 2013
    Sprout likes this.
  5. Thanks Jack, that's clear.

    As you know I invited surf and yourself to a fun kinda competitive trade off where we take a student or trade ourselves (surf only has an intern) to show how to make a $1,000,000 profit from $10,000 in a 12 month period. Real money down and a full audit from a top 5 international accountancy.

    Surf is afraid of photoshopping so I said he can pick the accountancy practice and auditor (can even be a friend of his) and look over one-broker statements so he knows there's no tricks. He can even try to reverse engineer if he wants.

    Unfortunately surf's says he doesn't have to prove his Price Drivers to me or anyone else and put me on ignore. I'm still going through the grieving process because I feel like I have lost my right arm when surf has me on ignore.

    So it's down to you and me Jack. I understand what you said about the difficulty getting anyone to differentiate their minds as it's one of the 1st roadblocks I need to demolish. Do you have someone who wants to have a go at using STC to demonstrate how their best attempt at X6 the ATR looks like?

    I am a wee bit ahead as we have a full 4 weeks completed and after a disaster of a first week due to beginners mistakes we got back on track, committed to the rules and the newbie has now over $30k in his account from a $10K start. Performance wise he's way ahead of the schedule so the end goal looks like a slam dunk.

    Now are you up for this or do you have a newbie or even an experienced SCT'er who wants to show ET that TA really works? I wasn't clear from your last reply if you're up for this? Really I was hoping for a 3-way race to the top but somehow surf's confidence in the superiority of his PD's seems to have evaporated and that was before his last stop out. You gotta have a few STC'ers by now that are mad keen to strut their stuff?

    I'll post this in Intuition Amplifiers thread in case you miss it here.
     
    #25     Mar 13, 2013
  6. I guess this drill is underway and it will end at 1 million. My journal will go through four 2.5 million dollar build ups, where some interim sweeps will occur.

    My hours will be a little wierd and I am just posting to help out.
     
    #26     Mar 13, 2013
  7. Despite the all above,do the wash trades about 55% of the time,until commissions are equal or greater of your yearly profit.
     
    #27     Mar 13, 2013
  8. #1 best thing I did was I threw in the garbage all of my trading books including the one by Livermore.
     
    #28     Mar 13, 2013

  9. Surprise.

    Wash trades disappear as skills and knowledge grows.

    as usual you misread and then "invent" mistaken understandings.

    yu are just a potential trader getting ready to become a beginner.

    LL..... So funny to not keep track of you.
     
    #29     Mar 13, 2013

  10. Hang with the Smurf, a top drawer indicator.
     
    #30     Mar 13, 2013