Trading for a living....full time....only income

So true.

 

It's the question precisely. How do you tell interesting ideas from some nonsense without spending too much time? It's still a mistery for me. I can't find the answer even after reading all the above.

 

The answer is in the market. Instead of studying posts, study the market. All your answers are in the market. Where one gets into trouble is paying too much attention -- or any -- to what people say about the market.

 

That's the judgement that is required to be a good trader.

 

You just have to spend the time, there is no short cut.

There are lots of wisdoms posted and if you think through them carefully, do your homework analyze the ideas throughly, you will find your answer.

Let me give you an example, as an option trader, the best advice I got from ET: If you trade options, going short, gamma is very dangerous.

 

It's not so much judgement as testing. A lot of nonsense reveals itself fairly quickly with minimal testing.

 

The ability to do that is part of being a good trader.

 

True. Unfortunately a great many newcomers don't even know how to formulate a hypothesis, much less test it. Hence the "what's the best setting for my MACD" kinds of questions.

 

I would like to ask the full-time elite traders here a question.

How do you cope with a drawdown? For those who do part-time, they still have jobs who pay a stable income. For full-timers, that is going to be difficult psychologically.

What about the gnawing feeling that maybe the edge is gone, after experiencing a drawdown?

 

If you have a heap of profits under your belt from all your years of trading, an orderly drawdown should not present a problem. If a drawdown shaves off some profits, all is good as the best time to buy is after a pullback, that is, that's the best time to be buying, if you know how to trade and read the markets.
So drawdowns should be seen as opportunities, not as problems.
If you have no confidence in your trading system, then it becomes a problem.
A trader who has fleeting edges, that is, they need to continually look for the next edge, my opinion is they never had an edge to speak of. Temporary fleeting edges is not good enough, it's like being employed where the boss keeps reminding you that you can be fired any moment, that's tough psychologically and your partner in life would probably be thinking of divorcing you due to stress on everyone. That's a sub-optimum way of living.