These anecdotes about aggressive-now-wealthy traders are such a crock of crap. No different than the tales of the lucky mother of three from Winnotka who hit the million dollar jackput at Ceasers. What is forgotten are the thousands - millions - who lost the game and faded silently into oblivion. Put a thousand monkeys in front of a quote terminal and keyboard and one of them will put George Soros to shame. And this proves precisely what? It is a statistic certainty that with enough people trading, someone will hit the right numbers. (Maybe it proves that 999 of them are posting here on E.T. wondering if they should be more aggressive?)
Rather than posturing using a sports analogy, how much do you risk on each trade(as % of trading capital), how many times a day do you trade, how many open trades do you carry at a time, what are the min and max number of trades you carry at a time? How did you arrive at these values? DS
TruthTeller, You are obviously wrong in your thinking. A Denis may be a swinger, but he swings consistently. Can you take 1000 monkeys, find one that makes a 2% profit on one trade. And tell him to do it consistently for 100 trades? I think not, A consistent player is a consistent player, Aggressive only makes him make more money You can find many people who can hit one big lucky swings, but can you find a barry bonds who can hit big swings consistently. Know the difference. Wealth is never built in one trade, its built over hundreds, thousands of trades. There is no randomness in becoming rich.
I think if you think about this statment a little more, you will see where your ascertainment is totally incorrect. You will find multiple instances that prove the contrary.
Prove it, don't just question, explain. Because I know where you are going at, and its nice for the fairy tales. No business is built in one try. It may be built in one opportunity, but many tries are required. Explain what you think is true.
This thread leads to nowhere as does the predicting randomness thread. People's opinions are all over the specter, but nobody budges one inch. It's human to firstly form a belief, then see only the facts that prove it and ignore the facts that contradict it. Too bad ... You can be reckless with your ET posts, but be careful with your money!
Ok, I'll bite. Why are you assuming that multiple tries are required to eventually lead to an opportunity. Ever heard the term of opportunity knocking? There are countless examples of people just going about everyday life and comming across some accidental discovery that was never even intended to be found from the start. http://www.exn.ca/Stories/2004/04/19/51.asp?t=dp I don't see it as a fairy tale, I see it as a pardox of life that applies to everything, from finance, to love, to spirituality, ect.. I'll agree no business is built in one try, the truth is its built in one oppurtunity. The problem comes when you equate oppurtunity as a derivitive of trying, when people should be using the term awareness. In conclusion: Oppurtunity is abundant and all around. Back on topic: The best offence is a great defense
It's interesting that you get alot of agreement to your point in this thread. Paul Tudor Jones disagrees with you. In the interview in market wizards, he mentions the trading rules he lives by. He says "The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense." Later he says talks about his "guiding philosophy is playing great defense". So let me throw the question back to you: What do you think that you know that PTJ doesn't? OldTrader
I made a lot of money by being aggressive. On the other hand, I lost even more doing exactly the same thing