Everybody wants to stay home in the morning instead of fighting the morning commute and TRADE. This is not limited to the people who have failed at other endeavors. I know plenty of 6 figure income people who would quit their jobs IF they had a viable way to trade for a living... but they don't.
One day I'll even edit my posts for spelling, term choice and general clarity ... glass houses, throwing stones and all that *sigh*
Ken, more in line with the original topic here, do you ever regret your choice of career? Ever wish you were doing something else, working with other people and such? I know this is not the point of OP's statement, but I'm curious
I will answer as we are taking a breather. You are all wrong-Mr. Hershey is very correct in some things he posts. Trading is not hard at all-in fact it is the easiest thing in the world to do-click and you are in-click and you are out-just click in and out at the right times and you make money-it can't get any easier than that. So-a question to all you who seem to know nothing about trading-why do traders click in and out at the wrong times? The General
Yeah... ignorance is what your posts are full of Your post about backtesting in defense of Jack Hershey (below) is a great example. Unfortunately Jack's stooge, nkhoi, deleted the thread because it made Jack look bad but I have screenshots. <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2442325>
I have always wondered a little bit if ET could not indeed be bad for a trader's abilities if not his very soul... Maybe it's about how your ignore list should look from early stages of learning to later stages.. Rude contentless posts should be responded to by the ignore button, plain and simple. I've found that in my journey toward profitability that as I catch on to how to trade, my propensity to be rude is reduced exponentially so I think it's safe to assume that the ignore list is the best place for those guys at every stage of development. There are people that come to this trading site and try to prove that trading is impossible, or they assert it with no real proof... ok, if you are learning to trade why pay much attention to them? Examine their arguments to see if you can learn from them and then hit the ignore on all those idiots, why do they waste their time doing that anyhow? Their behavior alone is enough to prove their stupidity... the site is owned by guys that made $100 million in their own lifetime by trading... Then you will notice as you get deeper into the subject that some posters will say things like "5 point stops on the ES are nuts" with seemingly great certainty... Huh?? That is going to depend on your time horizon for exiting and a lot of things... so you can hit the ignore on those guys that don't provide context, they are just trying to steer a crowd of people in some direction and that proves they are not real smart anyhow.. Eventually you will find a little lunatic core of people that detract from somebody else all the time... hit the ignore button, you won't learn whose advise is good or not by listening to the detractors, you have to do your own due diligence to see what anybody is presenting to know.... well, what they are presenting... When you come to ET and it seems like half of the threads are missing [70% might be a better target for the politics and religion section], then you know that you might be starting to learn to trade
ET is a testing ground for your readiness into the markets. If anything that you read on ET bothers you at all and I mean anything at all, then you are not ready for the markets. Clearly you are still too easily distracted from what is important and clearly you do not have sufficient self believe to maintain your position. sosueme
That's arguably really stupid. I could go to Yahoo boards and take shit from morons all day and I would then be ready to trade? LOL Ok, a new category for the ignore list, those that equate trading to some kind of adversarial duel to the death and think that traders have to be tough... I find that the markets are pretty friendly and cooperative, they let me ride a trend, they tell me when I might want to start thinking about reversing because a new trend is forming up.... markets are probably shucking off tough guys all day really... I should toughen up.... that's one for the books...
When I first started trading for a living I would visit ET on a regular basis and realized very quickly it was not healthy. I distanced myself from the poisonous nature of many of these posters. I can't honestly remember the last time I visited or posted here. Today I happened to drop by from a google link and ended up looking around out of curiosity and saw this thread. IMO, most of the people on ET have no business in the markets. They're insecure people looking for validation or hand holding. Trading is a brutal business that attracts a certain element that quickly consumes the weak and emotionally insecure. Having said that, trading is not rocket science. I make a decent living at it primarily because I'm in control of my emotions and I rely solely on myself and a system that works for me. It's very true, trading is boring when you know what your doing... and I like it that way. Leave the drama for your mama... If you want to succeed in trading, stop looking for the holy grail.. stay away from ET, take responsibility for your own trading decisions. Develop your own sound, proven set of rules based on your style, stick to them and believe enough in yourself that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Trading for a living is a reality for many solid, emotional secure, stable individuals... just not very many on these boards. If you can't control your emotions, you won't be able to control your money. I'll check in next year if I can remember to view this thread... peace out.
I worked on automated strategies for a long time and read ET for a long time too. The automation thing is a bigger project than most realize. Once you have some real intellectual property you soon realize that protecting it from theft is a costly engineering project. If somebody wants your stuff and they can access your ISP's servers, or even a node on the internet, basically they can spoof your brokerage and they can upload your strategy. So a couple of months back I hit the simulator. I can trade manually eventually, keep my intellectual property in my head and have a life... manual trading is done with a whole different and well known toolset anyhow. I sort of always thought I would quit ET when I started making money, likely I will keep expanding the ignore list and come here less often because I have fun here really...