There have been quite a few, so it wasn't easy to choose, but I'd have to go with "choosing to daytrade for a living". This is an incredibly stupid decision to make. The odds of success in daytrading for a living (its time intensive nature pretty much means you'll have to do it for a living) are so stacked against you it's not funny. I am no idiot, mind you; far from it. I even made money one year. Not your "$2000/day avg", not even $500, but an income that I'm unlikely to see working for a wage for a while yet. Still, as the bible says, "..time and chance happen to them all". I don't care what anyone says, daytrading for a living is lousy deal whatever way you cut it. Yeah, sure, there are some people that can make money at it, year after year after year, but they are raaaaaaare, and for all intents and purposes, you won't be one of them. Not a pretty picture, I know. And of those that are, it's a statistical certainty that some of them are by virtue of luck alone; markets may be a lot less random than academics believe, but they're a lot more random than traders believe. Don't misunderstand, I'm not railing against all trading. Not at all. I still maintain a great interest in the markets. Only that choosing to make your livelihood from trading the markets is, for the vast majority of people, about as bad a career move as you can make.
If you truly believe what you are saying then you should become a broker that caters to day traders They
I disagree. It is very risky to try this for a living, but no more so than say opening a restaurant....and for those that do "make it" the freedom (both financial and personal) are well worth the shot. BTW-I don't think it should be attempted by anyone who is happy with their current job, makes a great salary or most importantly, has to provide for a family.
Yeah I hate having no commute, no boss to answer to, having days off whenever I want. I'm jealous of my friends who get to take BART and buses for an hour to get to work.
There is much truth in what you've written. It all goes back to what some folks (Tharp, Douglas etc) have said: YOU are the most important part of your trading system, and knowing your own strengths and weaknesses is the most important part of developing a system. Unfortunately, most people run out of money before they understand that. They try a little of this, and a little of that, and never get any consistancy or success out of all of their effort. In the end, they walk away and give up. Still, it's important to be able to understand the big picture here. There are a lot of ways to make money that don't involve trading or markets. I sometimes think if I spent half as much effort pursuing those options as I do studying the market, I'd be a millionaire already.... Anyway, I wish you luck, and hope you find your niche soon. Life is too short to be pissed off every day... Z1
Spec: >markets may be a lot less random than academics >believe, but they're a lot more random than traders >believe. This is SOOOOO true. This is why I left discretionary trading behind for the world of full auto -- the computer doesn't get bored waiting for those non-random moments. JB
Zat, I don't disagree at all with what you say, in principle. However, I think it's more than a tad foolhardy not to consider the realistic difficulty of achieving the desired goal. With that consideration in mind, I find it extremely difficult to justify daytrading for a living as a wise decision.
Wise approach. I haven't got any concret methods on hand, but I'm sure there are many ways of exploiting the inefficiencies of the market place; it's just that I don't think that sitting in front of your PC all day, frantically clicking buttons to catch .05 is a very good way to go about it.