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It's a common misconception that day traders are exposed to less risk than longer term traders. They take on less risk per trade, but put on more trades. These effects net out. I trade slow partly out of choice, and partly because the effects of commission and spread make it very hard to make...

This poll has zero value as evidence when put up against the mountain of hard empirical evidence that most retail traders lose money and day traders lose more than anyone else. GAT

10% is roughly the annual standard deviation of returns for the S&P 500 index. Standard risk measure. GAT

Trading is about risk not return. The risk on holding 1 lot of ES is about 10% a year or 220 points, i.e. $11,000. On an account of $5,000 that's 240% a year. That's about roughly 15 times what a prudent trader would generally target. It's at least five times the "kelly optimal", which means it...

So your "advantage" is you use far more leverage than a prudent trader would even contemplate. And you don't believe in luck. I give up. GAT

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I'm not saying that self taught traders are massively inferior to professional traders. I realise I probably come across as a bit of a snob. I'm not saying that self taught traders are all dumb hicks. In reality there isn't much in an institutional...

I'd still like specifics. Otherwise you'll understand if I'm sceptical about these "advantages". It's an interesting point of view you have, which means trading is the only activity where having no education or training in the subject is a huge advantage. As far as I can tell having no...

Thanks. On a point of fact, I currently earn my living as a retail trader and have done for the last 3.5 years. I'm curious what these advantages are. They must be massive if retail traders can make 10 times more risk adjusted returns than even the very best hedge funds. Could you, or @Turveyd...

Congratulations. You're eithier very very good or you've just been very very lucky. You also can't compare the returns of someone with another job trading part time for a few hundred bucks a week against someone who needs to generate that money to live on. The OP can't rely on being very very...

The OP has been trading for several years already. And has already blown up at least once. I didn't say he needed 150K to start; I said he needed more than 100K if he was going to rely on producing 18K a year of trading income with no other job. I think it's far more dangerous and...

That's a return of 18%. Hardly 'barely profitable'. And if you're living off that 18% you need to make that consistently, every single month. Like I said earlier I'm curious to hear of hedge funds that can make that kind of money. Bernie Madoff doesn't count. GAT

Like I said that equates to an annual Sharpe Ratio of just under 4. Please tell me the names of the hedge funds making that sort of money, consistently, outside of high frequency trading firms (which the OP clearly isn't doing). GAT

With that frequency I'd look at python talking to a FIX API which has the advantage of working over multiple brokers. All the other solutions look to have much duck tape code involved which will slow things down or introduce errors or just break at critical moments. Having said that I'm not...

By the way you can do worse than go back and read the advice you were given... https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/how-can-i-get-over-fear-of-making-big-profits.204422/ ... in 2010. GAT

I'm hesitating to write this post as you're obviously in a fragile state. But you've already answered your question: Either I was lucky or I actually had a functioning trading system. After 3 weeks it's impossible to tell which of these things is true - you just don't have enough evidence...

If I pull up a chart for AAPL it's priced in dollars. It's a real pain in the neck to get a chart for AAPL in GBP. People who look at charts, and basically make momentum work, don't look at charts repriced in foreign currency. home bias cognitive effect tax and administrative hassle of owning...

It depends. I guess it depends on what you think causes momentum and who the marginal investor is. If the marginal investor is foreign capital then perhaps its true that you'll be capturing momentum in both the currency and the stock at the same time. If the marginal investor is domestic capital...

It depends on what type of thing you are doing. When position sizing you absolutely need to convert currencies. Otherwise your CAD or AUD positions would be undersized compared to your GBP. However in a lot of cases it doesn't make sense or makes no difference. A trivial example is if you're...

Personally I disagree. I think most traders fail because they (a) trade too much, (b) take on too much risk and (c) don't stick to their system. All of these failings can be put down to overconfidence - a cognitive bias. Simple trading systems with zero edge are profitable; but people can't...

Behaviour that made sense a million years ago no longer does. System 1 - fast instinctive response -made sense when we were trying to survive on the savannah. If we'd sat around thinking and being rational (system 2) we'd have got eaten by sabre toothed tigers. GAT