I Joined ET in 2001 when I started trading full-time. Prior to that I worked as a quant at a large CTA so had some prior experience. Still at it full time trading basically the same strategy, though have adapted/improved it over the years. Have not posted much as I've been too busy trading and arguing with a bunch of strangers online has limited appeal Have always been happy to meet up and chat with other traders wherever I am, but there aren't too many around. Going forward, I will be taking more advantage of this lifestyle and doing working holidays in interesting places. Maybe we should have a thread on here for nomad traders to connect with each other..
Yet price drivers work the same way...you enter a trade and hope u r lucky! That has to be the case since you have losing trades, you don't have a 100% or anywhere near it win rate. A fluctuating price influences other traders to trade which leads to future prices not being random (that doesn't necessarily mean you can predict them). A pseudo random generated set of prices is by definition, random (or as random as the algo that created it).
ET became a place of constant bickering over "my method is better than yours" and for that reason, a lot of the serious traders left.
i'm still trading... like other posters have said... got tired of the flame wars... quants more than HFT have ruined the trading biz. shaved edge down to fractions of a penny... no size available...maybe you get a couple of hundred shares when you cross markets... low volitility has also made trading awful.
The old traders never adjusted to the new environment created by quants and HFTs. There was also significant redundancies after the GFC so possibly many career changes took place as well.