Why do traders fail?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by Tradester123, Sep 10, 2013.

  1. Would you get out of bed ( aka do the work necessary) if the day target is break-even?

    I wonder how people would trade if their end of day target was break-even ?
    Obviously with the constraint of making at least one trade.
     
    #181     Mar 31, 2014
  2. cornix

    cornix

    Honesty I am an adversary of setting targets. They are purely artificial element in trading and don't reflect market reality, which is: profits and losses are never distributed evenly over time.

    The best "target" I would think about would be setting fixed trading hours and take every quality setup within those hours, leaving the result of trades up to the edge.
     
    #182     Mar 31, 2014
  3. busy with your shrink business?
     
    #183     Mar 31, 2014
  4. I think Cutten mentioned that he funded his first account by maxing out his credit card.
     
    #184     Mar 31, 2014
  5. cornix

    cornix

    Nope, autoparts wholesale which family of my wife is involved in for the last 20 years.
     
    #185     Mar 31, 2014
  6. dbphoenix

    dbphoenix

    Exactly. One shouldn't even be thinking about the money during the session. The focus should be on trading well.
     
    #186     Mar 31, 2014
  7. I am not sure your approach is motivating enough.
    Say you are given just one day next month to trade.
    You can choose your day, but you have just one day to take the trades
    you want.

    For which minimum level of profits would you be willing to really
    "get out of bed" for? I mean prepare really well?
    and which one would you say really easy to reach?

    0.1 ? 1 ? 10? 100? 1000? 10k? 50k? 100k? 1m? 10m? 100m?
     
    #187     Mar 31, 2014
  8. ammo

    ammo

    every trade is a bet or taking of risk
     
    #188     Mar 31, 2014
  9. cornix

    cornix

    Unfortunately trading is not pay per hour job, it doesn't work like that. More like a business in this sense. In our "real" business we have the same: some days are actually "down days" cause we pay salaries and store maintenance and day's sales don't cover that. But other days more than cover whole weeks in sales sometimes.

    That's how it works: probabilities and averages. Not certainty. Which freaks most people out (one of the top reasons of traders failure).
     
    #189     Mar 31, 2014
  10. dbphoenix

    dbphoenix

    And that's why so many traders fail. You'd have more fun just going to the casino. Or playing online poker.
     
    #190     Mar 31, 2014