John Carter's book is the holy grail???? Please tell me this a joke? He has a few good things in his book but most of his set ups are crap.
he's just another marketer. i would never buy books unless i see proof that the author really made money himself. very few people have made money in commodities. i never even heard of john carter. i heard of jimmy carter but he made money selling peanuts.
i was reading this input, then realize thought it was u, why can't u ever say what u want to say in 3 lines, da waste my time !
Trading for a living means consistancy. Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait. Having an open mind and a systematic way to "ride" a trade, and at the same time exiting a loser is the key. The difficult thing is accomplishing this. Too many people get hung up on the "money" and never the trade itself. You will have a losing trade.......that loser does not symbolize whether a system works or it doesn't. What symbolizes whether your system works is PERCENTAGES---CONSISTANCY. In addition, Trend is KEY in this market. Too many traders either look to play a reversal on the trend using an "edge" or divergence or other crap like that OR they look for a retrace. This makes no sense unless you're position trading/hedging. If you're scalping why wouldn't you ride the buyers? That's what the whole point is. In essence that's what many of the pit traders do too. They front-run and then exit. Lastly, the elements that go into a market are supply, demand, a time factor, and LAST is price. Price is just a number, and never an indicator. You need to understand these elements before you trade. Too many new traders consider the "evolved electronic" approach to this game. In the 70's and 80's traders did great without computer screens. So consider that for a while. There's several ways to trade in this market but what it comes down to is a percentage better than 50. A systematic approach is the best way to achieve this. How you go about this approach is up to you. It doesn't get any easier than that.
You can't make long term money trading futures because someone wins and someone loses each trade while your broker takes commissions from you.
Depending upon how big you're trading, commissions are meaningless. If your first comment applied to everyone, no one would be here doing it.
"Psychological factors in trading make this nearly impossible for most traders. You cannot "teach" traders this. It's an acquired trait" you most definitely CAN teach people this. i do. also, many successful trading firms employ psychologists etc. for exactly this purpose. imo, no matter how good the methodology is, a trader without sound EMOTIONAL grounding will almost certainly blow up. most traders will not recognize their emotional shortcomings, nor will they take the steps to rectify the situation (hiring somebody who can help them) as for the person who said you can't make money longterm trading futures cause it's zero sum, you absolutely don't understand math. poker is also zero sum (and just like trading has commissions, poker has rake, so that factor is there as well). are you going to claim you can't make money longterm playing poker. i have done VERY WELL (before the ban) playing poker, and many of the same rules apply - emotional management, solid business plan, proper risk assessment, understanding of probability etc. the vast majority of traders will lose money in futures. but at the end of the day, the EXACT same amount of money is won and lost in futures (sans commissions). plenty are MAKING the money you as a losing trader are losing. you can take the steps to step into the winning camp.
Exactly my point. That's what I had the "quotes" around the "teach". What I meant was that there's no sound rules on how to teach a person this. Every person is different, and so unless you have a professional to guide you it can be very difficult. On the other hand there are successful traders who have learned through trial and error, however it certainly takes perseverance.