90% traders don't make it???
- Thread starter kalashnicac
- Start date
LOL
Have you ever been in an Ibank? Many reasons why not to do it, the burn out & success rate (by success I mean MD, VP and above), and the required tolerance for pain as my good HS friend puts it. He is an Associate getting VP pay (250-300k/year). Close to burning out, he says it all the time.
I bet you're gonna do a summer associate program with your MBA. Trust me when I say this, you do not realize what you are gonna be signing up for.
Quote from kalashnicac:
I agree trade4success...
But even with one in ten traders making money, you would end up with an ever-increasing number of successfull traders. That doesn't make sense either.
Dig through the old posts
then dig through the recent posts.
Not too many whining in the old posts on how tough it is to make money from trading.
These days seems I see a new header detailing how someone plans on quitting trading if xxxxxxxx
Could that be a function of there being more relatively successful traders? therefore more competition for the same piece of pie?
I am going to assume you are referring to "Retail Day Traders", and that we are excluding "Investors".
I started Trading Stocks 15 months ago when I parted company with the Large Conglomerate I had a management position with. I worked for this company for 25 years. I was familiar with the market due to Trading my 401K for years.
I am not going to compare trading my 401K for years to Day Trading for a living, it is not the same.
I would say that the figure for all "Retail Daytraders" is the 90% or higher as a group. I base this on information from other traders I know and Professionals in the industry I also know. All of the people I talked to, with the exception of 1, who made in excess of 1.5 million trading Options, mainly Crude Oil, advised me not to do it.
I was fed up with the Corporate Politics and semi-burnedout on managing people. Having always enjoyed trading my 401k and being interested in the markets for years I decided to try Day Trading for a Living.
I transferred my 401k into two IRA accounts at Fidelity (where my 401k was managed) and opened a Trading account. One IRA was the part of my 401K that was contributed after Tax. I opened a Trading account in addition to this. and basically started by trading long positions in swing trades based on trends I was following. I started reading all the books I could buy on trading, ordered DVD courses, and did some paper Day trading on what I found. I then started active trading, was tagged an "Active Trader", and had my 12 month rolling average of trades where I could use Fidelity's Active Trader Pro Level 2 Directed Trading Streaming Platform with charting and got the $8.00 trade commisions.
To make a long story short, the first 8 months I was up and down worse than the DOW on FOMC day with Greenspan spouting vagarities. I had to transfer money from my IRA to fund my account to keep it above the 25K required as it was now tagged as an "Active Trader account". I started with 53k in the account and transferred over 25 k from my IRA. 7 months ago I started making money on a regular basis. At this point my trading account balance was 32k, and I was down approx. 46k. In the past 7 months I have been able to transfer out of my account 4k each month to live on and the balance is currently 44k. This makes me about 4 k shy of actually being even over 15 months.
What happened 8 months ago was that I woke up and stopped gambling and traded my account as a business. I got access to Wealth Lab shortly there after and started researching and Using Technical Analysis like I should have been. I finally found the way to admit I was wrong on a trade very quickly and get out with a minimal loss. I started using the set-ups I had identified, traded my plan and got out when I needed too.
Basically my point in this very long therapeutic post is that "Retail Day Traders" who like me have learned through very long hours of study and experience how to leave their emotions behind, not trade when the odds are against you, do not try to predict the market movements, trade the planned trade, control your greed, are properly funded, learn how th short, can admit when they are wrong, and enjoy what they are doing are going to be successful the majority of the time.
90% or more of the people who try this business can not change and adapt from the way society taught them things should be and adapt the mental attitude it takes to be successful trading. They give up after the first margin call or the account balance is almost gone.
I get up at 4 am each day the market is open and I am trading and trade into the after hour market alot. The rest of the time I am studying and refining as I still have a long way to go to be where i want to be.
Sorry for the long post, guess I needed to say that
Quote from Ripley:
Its OK
Do you think if you could double up your account size to 88K, do you think you can take home double what you do now? or you just don't have the stomach for it.
Interesting comment. I trade on 4 times margin, thats enough. I learned to control the greed, it was one key reason for being profitable now.
I am taking off tommorow, so I can ramble a bit.
