What's Your Edge? (For Equity Traders)

...I have prominently displayed near my screen the maxim "You don't HAVE to trade!".

 

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Excellent point. This is VERY important, and absolutely essential, and sometimes the hardest thing to do. Profit through inaction.

 

I did too, but my wife took it down and put her picture (the one with "the frown") in its place

 

My edge is the hard-earned knowledge that trading is a primarily a game of statistical probabilities, and that no single trade - no matter how it turns out - should have a strong emotional impact.

Being a professional trader means having the ability to stand back and look at results over weeks and months, not minutes or days. Only in the longer term do statistical patterns and probabilities reveal themselves.

 

(1) Trade stocks I "know"
(2) I don't get greedy (a profit is a profit) and take what the market gives me

 

...I'll bet that's for the same reason I have a picture of my wife right by my screen, to remind me of her while she's "working" and I'm "trading"! (Trading is only slightly higher than masturbation on her scale of unsavory activities.)

 

DHOHHI:

Good points, short and sweet.

Just as a simple comment, to #1 above, I would add: "... with a strategy I know well"

and to # 2 above, I would add something to the effect that, although I'd like to take any size profit when I have it, I need to balance that against my current stoploss, or else risk a whole day's or week's gains on a few trades gone bad. In other words, I watch my risk/reward ratio because it's key in the long run.

 

so did martha.

 

I bet you if Baron launched a new "Elite Trader's Spouse" forum, he'd make even more money than he makes with this one. Just imagine all the moaning and groaning and "constructive criticisms" and "...I understand BUT..." variations that that forum would manifest

 

Here is my secret. Follow these 4 easy steps and you too can do it.

1. Wake up ready and wired at 8am with a line of coke.

2. Blowjob at 8:30am from whatever skank you picked up the previous night. If last night wasnt successful for you, the nearby homeless woman(man?) will do it for under 10 bucks.

3. Nice big fat blunt of hydro at 9am

4. Shot vodka or cognac at 9:28am


But seriously there is already a very similiar thread.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2868