Traders are not ranked higher because most of them wipe out their account before they have the change to develop a disease or stress that will kill them. And good traders should not have stress because they make money.
The larger the amounts i handle, the more stress i feel. It also doesn't matter whether a trade is a winning or losing, my heart is always racing. Strange really, i always thought the more money I had, the less stressful life would be, but doesn't seem to be the case. Oh well.
Correct, a good trader will be well capitalized and trade in a way that doesn't give draw downs to the level at which the trader will feel stressed. The easiest way to achieve this is to keep position size/risk to a level where you can sleep easy at night. Except in the early years of trading when the learning curve/losses will make it very stressful, more than most other lines of work.
I strongly agree and is one of the things I've mentioned. Most retail traders (the independent traders) go bust long before they develop any health related problems from stress. Yet, they do have stress regardless to the level of stress (low, medium, high). That reason alone is why retail trading doesn't make any of the top 10 most stressful jobs because that top 10 list usually involves those that have endured stress for many years on a consistent basis involving their careers or the job itself has an immediate high risk factor (injuries, exposure to diseases and other factors). The issue is the few traders that manage to hang in there after many years. If they are stressed...it can easily be diagnosed via in depth stress test with a physician or constant blood pressure readings while trading in comparison to when not trading. I disagree with this statement because you're making the assumption that a good trader has the ability to control outside influences...maybe the little stuff but not the big stuff. For example, I had a close friend that was a very successful retail trader...almost 7 digit income consistently for 5 years. One day he finds out about his spouse cheating on him, she leaves him, nasty custody case of the kids in court, harassment issues from the other guy and so on... His trading went down the tubes (not profitable) for 2 years until he got things resolved in his personal life (e.g. he got custody of his kids, no more lawyer appointments, no more court cases and so on). It was also during those 2 years he developed health problems. Now that he's back on track and profitable again along with the health problems gone...he's happy again. My point is that personal problems (especially the big stuff) do have an impact on our trading especially for discretionary traders. Therefore, good traders do have stress in their life and it most likely will not be caused by trading itself but the stress will eventually have an impact on their trading results if it persists (unresolved). As I stated in a prior message, everybody is different...our ability to handle certain stressful conditions will differ from the next person...that should be obvious. Mark
"I disagree with this statement because you're making the assumption that a good trader has the ability to control outside influences...maybe the little stuff but not the big stuff." you can't control the outside influences. you can control how you react to it. it is similar to wishing somebody lots of luck. the saying is lots of luck not lots of good luck. there is a reason for that saying. it doesn't matter in life whether u have good luck or back luck. it is what you do with it is which is important.
Unfortunately many can't control how they react and then when they realize such...they usually get help from someone to help them deal with the problematic big stuff (e.g. lawyers, doctors, psychologist, health professional, social worker and so on). Thus, if we all could control how we react all the time...a lot of those above professions I mentioned wouldn't exist. Mark