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Did they have some true edge, like being floor traders or paying low commission or something, or they could be profitable just the same if they traded from home like the average ET trader ?

I claim that the success of other people and my own success in trading is a result of luck - being at the right time, at the right place, with the right strategy that fit well over the price up to this moment. I am trying to be critical of my performance just as if it were someone else's.

You can say that markets are not rational at times. Unfortunately you can't say when except in hindsight, which means that the irrational behaviour cannot be profitably exploited. This is the meaning of "efficient" in the Efficient Market Hypothesis which I refer to.

That's a nice analogy. If you have night vision goggles where the others don't - you have an edge. But in the market everyone has goggles :cool: We all have the same computers, access to the same database and looking at the same price. The only difference is in our heads. But as I explained...

It would be no magic if there were very few people trying to do it, i.e. not much competition. Then there really would be nice, predictable trends with not much noise and whipsaw. But there are hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) trying to catch these trends which make them what...

I didn't fail... yet. But you are right about the advisors.

... because there may be someone here who has come to similar conclusions and can share their insights. Or I may be just plain wrong and trying to outsmart the millions of people trying to outsmart you is a game worth playing.

That's the interesting thing. I beat every market I traded in the last 5 years since I started trading by a significant margin. But this means absolutely nothing. If I am going to continue to do this in the next five or fifteen years, I want to know that I have a chance to beat the market in the...

I posted some of my thoughts on another thread on why you can’t make any money from speculation (above the normal long-term return for stocks), but I didn’t get challenged so I decided to post this in a separate thread. I’ve been trading for a couple of years now, but only a week ago I...

Forex brokers always trade against their clients. You are buying and selling from them. In the futures and stock market, you are not trading with your broker, your order goes to the exhange and is executed there. So with futures and stock brokers you can blame only yourself for any losses. They...

I see :) I really wonder if the people who voted "100%+" know even one investor/speculator who has achieved such spectacular risk adjusted returns. I don't think that there is such person. In fact I don't think that any person has ever achieved to increase his capital 1,000,000 times from...

Cutten, would you reveal what's the point of this, or you'd rather wait for some more opinions :confused: I really miss to see the point of this question, unless you are setting up your pension plan or something :) Or is it just a theoretical question...

This may be a dumb question, but who bought the puts in your analogy?

No, it's a zero sum game, so no value is created. If there is someone with money to invest, and someone who needs money to spend, they both meet on the stock exchange and make a deal. When enough people meet a fair price is achieved on the auction principle. The buyer of stock receives...

tradersboredom, I agree with all you said, except for one thing - winning traders, speculators, hedge funds and active mututal funds, do not get paid for providing liquidity to the markets. Because losing traders also provide liquidity but they don't get anything, only losses...

Sorry if I ruin the thread, lindq, but I found an answer to my question and I want to post it. I've been trying to find an answer to this question for years... Since traders, hedge funds, active mutual funds etc. do not create any value, it follows that the winning ones simply steal it from...

Given the restriction for 20% drawdown for a period of 10-20 years, I'd say a return of about 10% is what can be expected. I base this on analysis of the performance of the best CTAs. Of course if you think you can do better than them, you can achieve a higher return with the same risk. But I...

I see, that makes sense.

That's a tautology :)

OK, but what does a trader get paid for? Who gives him/her the money and why? A bank for example is an intermediary between borrowers and lenders. But let's say a hedge fund makes a 100 million in profits, what service did it provide for that money? In other words, what is it that the majority...