Totally true and agreed. Most people will see at least 1 supercycle(if not more) in their lifetime. Internet stocks in 1999-2000. Go super long. Then got out. U.S. real estate 2002-2006 Vancour, Shanghai, Toronto RE Cryptos 2013 to January 2018. I wished I had gotten in earlier. I got in pretty late from Oct 2017 to Jan 2018. Still made OK. But I could have made a killing if I gotten in earlier... But I'm superglad by then my trading skills have improved so I got out near the top(16K). Then I re-enter near 18-19K. But I exited as soon as it started going down. I thank everyday that my trading skills have been honed by then. Else it would have been a top wipeout. I didn't make much because I didn't buy much. I was waiting for the exchange to approve me size. By the time they got around to approving it was Jan 2018. At least I didn't get killed HODLing it. Hunt for the next bubble... But the problem is some people get lucky and cash out without never learned how to to trade. Some people get lucky in the beginning but didn't sell until the end when their windfall fortune disappeared. All supercycles end. All bubbles end. I understand a lot of people on ET are full-time traders so they need to intraday/swing trade. Even on the intraday horizon, I still think it's BETTER to do intraday swing trading instead of scalping for ticks. Even for the couple of hours I trade in the morning, I'm always just AMAZED at the movements in NQ. So many points up then down then up and down. All day long. Of course, I can't catch them up all, but the possibilities/opportunities are endless. But even easier was just to long 2009 and just held for the next 10 years. I wished I had done that with just QQQs. Or if you had the stomach for it, go long NQ futures in 2009 and continually roll over. Incredible returns. But here we are... Now that I have learned to catch uptrends and downtrends, I'm hoping the next 5 years will be my time to catch the bigger moves. Put to work the hard lessons learned from the past trading mistakes.
I am up a couple of thousand dollars but, I have had losses one after other of late. Cutting down on trading and reviewing my trading records. The losses ate up a couple of thousand dollars more. Losses should be kept as small as possible.
+26.06% in my brokerage account...with a lot of boneheaded moves. Have to figure how to pull the ones in my investment account....they changed the webpage. Not even gonna count my crypto losses.....because that's not real money
I agree with what you say for the average working professional. In fact this is what I did since 2010 -2018 with 90% of my networth. But if you want trading to be your profession then you should be able to do better than that.
I've been through 2 financial freedom cycles or whatever you want to call it that I actually had money on the line like my whole nut. Easy as flopping a boat and having players toss money at you as you check and call check and call.. One I made a boatload and the other I stood and just watched as I sold 1 month after I went in in March 2009....
It is not position sizing that is the problem as the 2% risk already built into every trade. Still, cutting losses further will increase profitability. Mistakes need to be cut and avoided but, we are all human and will make mistakes when trading. One top trader said if you can get 80% of your trading right, you will do fine!