One thing that doesn't get discussed enough is the probability of success of an endeavor. My take is that if you start as a fat, middle-aged, out-of-shape guy, you got higher chances of success of making it into Premier League than starting as an intelligent, well-educated, resourceful college graduate and making it into trading. I DON'T KNOW ANYONE THAT GOT HERE WITHOUT CHEATING. It's literally setting yourself up to become Michael Jordan / Britney Spears / Tom Cruise / similar. Lottery ticket, with a lot more effort and money. Talking about successful traders, I only know one guy that made it and he cheated, essentially used insider trading. Drinking with the right guys, finding out stuff before it hit general public ear. Some day I'll write a Medium article how and why there's nothing left for the little guy. But probability aside there's another reason why people choose trading. It's a religion. Mind you, what would you say it's the fundamental trait of a religion? Faith you might say? Close but not quite. It's HOPE. It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_box. Investing your hope in winning an extremely unlikely lottery ticket in trading is far less delusional than adhering to some traditional religion, especially since here you also have a semblance of self-determinism and control over your own fate. Or, wait a moment, you have that in regular religions as well. So I guess the only difference is in real probability of realizing that hope.
Please define successful. Also, would be interesting to know specifically what you did in your journey as a trader so far which failed. Personally, I don't think success in trading is that hard if you have modest expectations. Just trade with very low leverage and a lower trading frequency. Most people (me included) seems to want to get rich from trading starting out with a small capital base. This requires super successful trading on a daily basis and high leverage. I think that's a big reason for why so many fail.
>> Please define successful. Guy I know became a billionaire. As far as I know in two steps, one where he first made some $20MM (million dollars), followed by a $300MM one. >> Also, would be interesting to know specifically what you did in your journey as a trader so far which failed. I have enough experience at this point to know that: 1) Directional is relegated to the stupidest of the stupid (including guy I knew, he was a football player who found a way to predict direction with 100% certainty and used it two times ) 2) Arbitrage is divided between: a) High frequency, where you need to have at least 10 billion dollars to even count in the competition. b) Mathematical, on which I almost got a PhD but then I realized it's all very fascinating but at this point in time it all falls back to #a >> Most people (me included) seems to want to get rich from trading starting out with a small capital base. This requires super successful trading on a daily basis and high leverage. I think that's a big reason for why so many fail. Count me in on your observations. I still am not hopeful but certain I'll become a billionaire starting and doing exactly what you described. Only not in capital markets but another, 7 billion souls market where I can sell my product.
If that's where you set the bar, I'd say very few qualify. Especially if this is a retail trader. I imagine he started out with considerable capital as well? Specifically, what do you mean? Are you saying it's impossible to predict or even just follow direction in the markets? I don't see why a retail trader would even attempt to compete in these subsets of trading. From my point of view, programming and mathematics are simply tools. They have no inherent value on their own. If they did, every programmer and mathematician would have solved the markets. I think it took Jim Simons over 10 years to solve the markets. And he had a pretty impressive background starting out and a strong team to back him. Sounds good.