I just spoke through PM with a supposed FX trader and we talked a little about life etc. We exchanged perspectives and viewpoints. This isn't first time I engaged in private conversation with many of you. When we exchange viewpoints on life and trading in general, we essentially exchange crucial information about our intelligence and process of thinking. Without a doubt I've reached a conclusion that BRAIN power (speed, abstract thinking, imagination, speed of realization) exactly determines if you will be a successful trader for many years. You are born with this thinking advantage or you are not, it isn't a choice. We would all choose to be Einsteins if we could, but it isn't a choice.
Before you come up with all kinds of predictable arguments, no doubt containing "I know a dumb guy who made it" etc keep in mind that luck will make sure some people seem like an exception from the rule also keep in mind survivor-ship bias
just now people are panicking because FXCM no longer offers stop loss and limit orders people are wondering if IB will do the same, poor fellas still do not understand the difference between BUCKETSHOP and ECN broker its all about ability to think
Trading sites are full of rhetoric and hindsight, the same old chimps talking monkey magic and utter BS. I think you are spot on, you either have it or you don't. The markets are the only place on earth where complete and utter muppets think they can rub shoulders with seasoned vets and come out on top. Whatever! Alarm bells are ringing my friend. Dackster.
Most Nobel Prize winners have IQs that are not all that far above average. What they do have is persistence. Maybe that comes from believing in what they are doing or whatever but they typically work for fifteen years on something before they publish. Traders don't publish because they succeed by keeping their intellectual properties secret rather than by winning a prize for exposing it, otherwise it's the same to me. I'm really about ten years into this game and the little intellectual property I've picked up on is really Nobel Prize winning type of stuff. Some of it comes from Nobel Prize papers actually and other was stuff that is barely mentioned but that I glommed onto and developed and I'm really happy with all my stuff.. I still cannot turn a profit on the screen! So I've proven to myself that it takes Nobel Prize winning level knowledge plus simple computer gaming skills. This morning I found more problems with NinjaTrader at the open that I can work around, I'll be rewriting indicators this weekend.. I was frantically changing the x axis on two charts and keeping my eye on a third one and eventually I just got out of synch with the market and everything I did was absolutely the opposite of what I needed to do... You need two separate personalities, one is a pasty faced Nobel Prize guy that never leaves his office and the other is a computer gamer that relieves stress by taking Karate lessons or skateboards or something... try and put that combo together some time! NLP can't even do that!
I just read that, returned it to the library just a couple days ago... he's not the first author with ideas like that, another one determined that it takes 10,000 hours, this one says 1200... you have to put in some time... I do believe that this upcoming decade will show that the man for the job of trading is a computer though..