Well, investopedia is wrong...you can't just 'exclude' costs...and it's explanation that a stockmarket can be not zero sum because it can 'create wealth', well that's just ridiculous...
I agree completely. Successful trading is simple. But the path to it, a maze. Littered with wrong turns, dead ends, mirages, fools and thieves. I've always likened it to the Rorschach inkblot - people see what they want. The market takes on whatever structure we give it. Yet its timeless form remains the same.
If the value of all outstanding shares is valued by the most recent trade wouldn't that indicate that wealth can be "created." For example, there are 50mm shares of a stock that were all originally purchased for $10 and after trading range bound it gaps to $35/share. What would be the company's market cap when portfolios are marked to market? Have all of the shareholders paid $35? Think that one through again.
"Well, investopedia is wrong...you can't just 'exclude' costs" I agree, options is a negative-expectation "game" due to the costs (of course, except for market-makers!). Joe.
Yes, trading IS simple. But don't confuse simple with something anyone can do. Experience can't be had overnight. Yet, trading is simple indeed, read: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=98057
What that means for society as a whole as well is that its organized in a very duplicitous way. I mean its one thing not to tell someone to do something properly but its just plain in your face wrong to deliberately mislead them to draw the wrong conclusions. And that happens every day on ET. I mean that certain interests set out to create those wrong turns just to stop people from attaining the sense of fulfillment that comes from being successful. Then they demonize money and drive the point home that corruption and evil are the byproducts of this process. The result is that despite there being 75000 posters on ET there isn't one post, not one, containing that distilled 30 second essence of hats important in trading. And thats unbelievable. I mean i refuse to believe its real...
its all in the mind.its how you view trading and then nailing down a 'system" that works right for you. i have my own little niche that works great for me but to others its useless. regardless of what some say,trading is NOT easy. it takes years to learn and anyone who says otherwise is either a liar are one in a million. truth be told,trading is one of the toughest business's out there and the only survivors are the one's that stuck it out through the worst of times and have the battle scars to show it.aside from finding your "niche" you must learn to lose but more importantly learn to lose small. also,never enter a trade withough a plan,trading on the fly is a fools game. it'll work a few times but eventually thats where you will take your biggest hits.
I don't share my strategies too much because there's very little point; to me, each setup is unique. Yes, there are some trades I'll get in that are "textbook", but even then it's up to me and my experience and intuition to determine the difference between a good textbook trade and a bad one. I have made so many trades that I've figured out which trades tend to be good and which ones tend to be bad, but trading is not black and white, thus the same setup will work one day and not work the next because of some subtle difference that I will pick up (or maybe not) because of experience whereas a beginner won't be able to differenciate. I genuinely have no concern in regards to making my strategies public - I don't think anyone will be taking my liquidity away and keeping me from getting into good trades. I just dont' see any point in going on about what setups are good and which aren't, because it really is the trader and his experience that allow him to perceive new setups and trade them properly. Take leaning on size - most would say that strategy has no edge. I disagree, I think leaning on size can be immensly profitable - if done properly. If you buy stock everytime a big bid comes in or steps up, and sell vica-versa, you'll certainly lose money. To explain why I do and don't lean on size, I would have to go through about 20 different trades I choose to take where I was leaning on an order, and another 20 (or maybe 40) trades that were similar to the ones I took yet I choose to pass up for one reason or another. There's just no point in me doing that. Even if someone memorized my reasons, to be able to make money and see the opporunities the way I do, the person needs to first get his ass handed to him by the market and then learn from there. Strategies that work: FADE LRPs. Buy into LRPs on great news. Go long in front of a bid stepping up, then short it once it starts to get taken out or you feel it's near the top. Go short in front of a stepping offer, then go long once it starts getting taken out or you feel it's near the top. Find refershing buyers and sellers and lean on them. Find refershing buyers and sellers which are getting so much pressure put onto them that it's unlikely that they'll be able to hold up for too long, and short in front of the refershing buyer/go long in front of the refershing seller. This contradicts what I said above, but only genuine gut feel and market experience can tell you when to go with a refersher and when to go against it. Find size that is "off-the-books" (aka a floor broker on the NYSE with a hidden reserve) that is holding a stock up, who is keeping his displayed size at a certain level. Then take the size out and whatever's within a few cents behind it once he decrements to less than he was showing before. Find a situation where a stock is in a tight range, and on one side, there's a big bid or an offer, and on the other side, a buyer or seller accmulating. In most situations - let's say for example that there's a big offer for 50,000 shares at 59.60, and the stock can't break 59.45ish, because bids keep coming back and offers in the lower end of that range get taken out - the reason the offer isn't being bought is that the buyer wants to try to get all he can before buying the offer, since once that offer which is acting as resistance is gone, the price will certaintly fly. If you accumulate in the lower end of the range, you can always add more to your position once the offer starts getting taken out. If the offer goes in one print, or almost one print, you know you're golden. Find a stock that has run up to a new high, where lots of size is, but then doesn't act at that high like it did before - perhaps every offer in sight was getting taken out in 2 prints, but now at this new high of $78, only pikers with a few hundred shares want to buy. If you can be quick to recognize this, you can profit off of the ensuing panic when everyone goes "shit, no one wants to buy the $78.00 offer, let me get out"... a lot of the time the buyer's not done at this point, he's just letting the stock drop to accumulate more before he takes the offer out, but sometimes it is... Will reading what I just wrote really help any new trader? I doubt it.