IMO, any behavior can be changed if you put enough energy behind it. Your friend is being a victim to his circumstances. Poor me mode. Been there, done that. I think whats scares people the most is we truly can do/be anything we want. Some go for it, some stay stuck in fear. As far as I know this is not a dress rehearsal.
discretionery trading can't be coded Nodoji will discover this should she ever actually try and make her trading into an algo the algo wont work, or if it does it will underform the human trader I believe that the key to daytrading is intuition, a sixth sense, or whatever you want to call it how could it be anything else? how else can you explain the massive attrition ? sure you have to have rules and statistics and all that...... but without the intuition it is all useless there is no edge on the screen the edge is between the ears and even then you have no guarantee it will last
Here is an example of what I mean. This was posted by a guy on a blog comment..... have no idea if he is really profitable or not, or if so how much he is making, but I think he is probably right quote below:
I had my core strategy coded back in 2010 and it was consistently profitable. Watching it turn profits without hesitating or second guessing the signals was, in fact, the thing that convinced me to become more aggressive with my trading, to stop trying to cherry pick and to just trade the damn plan. There are edges all over the screen in every imaginable trading time frame, but without the "courage and swift action to take positions when he identifies potential moves" the trader is unable to exploit them. With enough experience, many traders develop "intuition", but I believe this is nothing more than the subconscious mind calling on a library of patterns (price, volume, context, indicators, etc.) and feeding buy/sell signals to the conscious mind. I've not reached that point yet, though my "intuition" appears to have a decent edge if "faded".
Oh, I thought I remembered you saying that you hadn't tried to actually code it into a runnable algo. so I dont know what to think now still think there has to be something more to it than just the charts..... this daytrading stuff is too much for me, as enticing as you may make it sound I stick to long term....... my edge is buying dips in rising markets (and collecting dividends) using my own stupid simple way of identifying a market as 'rising'. I havent had many losing trades the last couple of years... sooner or later though, this market will roll over, and I'll be wrong..... that's something I've been thinking about lately.
The original core plan was automated. What I do now has grown significantly out of that core plan, and is not automated. Day trading is the most difficult trading to master, IMHO, so I wouldn't say the trading itself is enticing, but the opportunity for significant returns if a profitable strategy is mastered is enticing. I also buy dips regularly in a rising market (and short rallies in a falling market), but I do this in a very short time frame (5min/1min).
ok, so I was sort of right.... but edges all over the screen? well if you say so... I dont know what to believe in regards to that seems overly optimistic I think edges are very small and are primarily intuitive in nature but who knows.... I could be wrong.... unfortunately trading is a secretive business if I want to be an athlete I can find other highly successful athletes to compare myself against their great feats are performed in public and their stats readily available in the public domain but in trading everything is smoke and mirrors I hear some ppl say a profit factor of 2 with 40-50% wins is holy grail quality some guy on another site put up stats for March that give 63% win rate and a PF of 3 some guy on BMT said he had an 80% win rate with a PF of 7....... but later on starts a website selling education (LOL) so answers are all over the place
the secretive nature of trading is the most frustrating part of the entire business. and im not talking about trading strategies, im simply talking about performance. i dont care what coca colas recipe is but i can clearly see that they are selling a ton of soda. for example, al brooks often states that he goes many days without losing but will never tell how many pts he makes or how much money he makes, or how many contracts he is trading or anything else. yes, smoke, mirrors and a lot of talking behind the curtain.
I don't think anything I do is secretive, it's pure price action concepts available from Brooks, Volman, Suri, Anek, several current ET posters, and probably hundreds of others. I ignored everything successful traders told me, screwed up again, started reading some Brooks, got some ideas, got an answer to a question from Redneck once, got some ideas, watched a video AustinP posted on ET once, got yet more ideas, started working really hard to develop a plan with rules and came up with a very profitable way of day trading. The precise way I enter and manage my trades might be different from the precise way Cornix or Xspurt or anyone else enters and manages their trades, but to be able to trade a method you have to make it your own so you can trust it. Why would you care how many points someone makes or how many contracts they trade? How would that help you learn to trade based on probabilities in your favor? As for the loneliness of success, that's a crock o' crap. If you're successful and feeling lonely because you can't talk "shop" with your friends and family, then do some informal mentoring and help guide a frustrated soul toward discovering their own Holy Grail of success.