Am I Wasting My Time?

[wrbtrader]

If you retailers had access, you blew up even faster. Members of congress are allowed to trade based on inside information and when you look at their portfolios 90% of them still suck.

https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/senatetrading

So don't you think you'd make any money just because you can take a sip of the fountain first.
Trading is about finding and understanding a niche and manage the portfolios risk in a way that you can exploit price dislocations that only you can see without blowing up.

Love the link by the way...

It reminds me about Hillary Clinton trades as a successful Cattle Futures trader that turned $1,000 into about $100,000 dollars in less than one year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_cattle_futures_controversy

Her gains were 1 in 31 trillion according the the experts although she wasn't in Congress during those trades. Regardless, its tough to catch a member of Congress trading on inside information and the same is true for institutional trading firms that do it too.

In contrast, us retailers will be front page news when caught doing such which is why I'm a little surprise by that link you posted...someone out there actually keeps statistics about such. I now wonder if they keep individual stats of each politician listed ?

They must be also keeping individual statistics if they're able to keep that total statistics like that.

Regardless, I think us retailers will know what to do with that info if given access to the fountain first...hopefully.

Edit - I've now discover they actually keep stats on each individual...whoa.

P.S. I went to college with one on that list...didn't even know he's done some trades but he knows I trade. Will give his wife a call to tease him a little.

Not too much teasing. My teenager is thinking about going to military school in the U.S....if he stays on that path...I think I will need a letter from a congressman as a recommendation.

wrbtrader

 

[Same Lazy Element]

You cant predict when the big winning periods will come. Otherwise hedge funds wouldnt trade through those periods of losing months. They would just stop and wait. Same applies to smaller traders. Unless you have a highly monthly win rate you never know when those winning periods will come, you could be waiting a long time. Lumpy trading profits are not predictable like other seasonal businesses, like retail shops, where large profits are almost guaranteed to come every Xmas.

Of course you don't know when your strategy is going to make or lose money. You're almost asking the right question. It's not about the win rate but rather about the positive expectation of the strategy. If your strategy goes into a lengthy drawdown or even into a flat period, you need to know that it still has positive expectation to be able to rely on it.

Given a certainty that your strategy still works, you can make allowances for drawdowns or flat periods (e.g. a Sharpe 2 strategy can have a 6 month drawdown or a flat period, but far less likely to have a losing year). For example, imagine that you found a recurrent arbitrage that, on average, takes 1-2 months to collapse but in the worse case scenario will have to held to expiration of the securities.

 

[smallfil]

I care about supply / demand. If I didn't, I wouldn't mention it.

Yet, as I'm sure you've notice...most prefer to instead focus all their attention on the charts or whatever it is that they're trading.

wrbtrader

That would be me. I use stockcharts pretty much for my trading decisions. There are 1,000 ways to make monies in the stockmarket and as long as it works for you, why not?

 

[BlacknBlue]

If you can't make money with 100K then yeah sorry you can't make it. If you can't make $200 a day which is only 0.002% then it just aint for ya! No worries. You can still find a job in the investment field to earn around 6 figures eventually.

 

[ironchef]

- Leave the liquid markets for niche markets. This is probably the best piece of advice I can give anybody who wants to get into trading. If you dabble with S&P500 stocks, ES, CL, treasuries or FX and on top of that with technical analysis or orderflow (aka. the trash everyone does), you won't get anywhere.

You need to trade something that nobody gives a shit about and you can preferrably trade against retail or small commercials. None of these markets can be accessed through IB or any other discount broker, so you have to dig a little. Exotic currency NDFs, small low floating stocks outside the US.

Best advice I have read for us mom & pop amateur retails. Get off the beaten path and OP can find his niche.

It is foolish to think $100K is enough capital to trade for a living without a day job. Unless you are super good, you do not have enough cushions to compound your gains if you need all your profits to put food on the table.

There are two groups of amateur traders among us. Group one traded on the side while holding a day job and one day quit day job to trade full time because we no longer needed our day job and could afford to trade without a side income. Group two quit their day job early, tried trading for a living from the get go.

There are many within the ET community from both groups. But the odds are stacked against group two.

 

[Same Lazy Element]

If you can't make money with 100K then yeah sorry you can't make it. If you can't make $200 a day which is only 0.002% then it just aint for ya! No worries. You can still find a job in the investment field to earn around 6 figures eventually.

LOL, you think 50% ROC is something that can be taken for granted?

 

[ironchef]

LOL, you think 50% ROC is something that can be taken for granted?

No worry, he knows what he is doing, routinely making 50% a year trading full time with $100K capital.

However, it is kind of tough to live on $50K a year these days if you have to support a wife and kids.

 

[BlacknBlue]

No worry, he knows what he is doing, routinely making 50% a year trading full time with $100K capital.

However, it is kind of tough to live on $50K a year these days if you have to support a wife and kids.

Not sure what both of you are talking about or if you're just twisting my words for the sake of making an argument out of nothing.

What is wrong with making $200 a day? Of course I wouldn't take that for granted because I was there at one point and was pretty damn proud of finally making it as a trader? What is wrong with making 0.002% a day when the market/stocks give directions in 2% in any direction on any given day? I'm sorry if someone has tried for 5/6 years and can't do this with 100K then I'll stand by what I say and he just can't do it and should move on.

Uh sorry I didn't create an equation to factor in potential wife and kids and create a variance table or post multiple scenarios depending on the age of childs, number of childs, how lazy a wife is ETC, in order to establish a target income based on 100K in BP. I'll be sure to do that next time...

 

[Gaslight Capital]

Not sure what both of you are talking about or if you're just twisting my words for the sake of making an argument out of nothing.

There is a surfeit of pessimism and doubt among elite traders; and a certain conceit as well. A conceit that expresses itself in a yearning to elevate one's own standing by stating a contrary opinion to that recently posted by someone else.

 

[formikatrading]

Mike:

This goes back to our prior conversation. Given your beliefs (or should I say "doubts") about whether this is even possible means that you have no chance.

I wanted to post this question here. Might be a stupid question, but just trying to look at this from a realistic perspective.

Am I wasting my time chasing the "trade for a living" dream?

I've done countless hours or research and it seems that the only people making real money in this industry are selling their systems or selling their mentoring and coaching services.

Additionally, I took a step back and thought about the potential outcomes and none of them really seem to add up either. The best-case scenario to me would look like I make several thousand for all the time and energy put into it, and that might not even be realistic.

- Trading with only $100k of capital is not even close enough to potentially trade for a living
- No path to raise real money from outside investors in the US with all the SEC red tape.
- No track record
- Lastly and most importantly, I feel that there is barely any edge out there for the retail trader. With all the competition in the market, I find it very hard to believe anybody out there truly makes an income from just trading for a living.

I started my trading education path back in 2011 up until about 2016 then life came around, but recently I've been coming back to the drawing board but this time around knowing what I know now, I am wondering if this is even a realistic path to go down or if I should just stop now and focus my time on something that could pay off more instead of going down the rabbit hole.

Again, this might be stupid, and I am sure I will get a lot of "noob thinks he is going to make millions overnight" or "haven't even traded yet and is already going to quit" type replies but I'm just trying to look at this from a realistic and logical path this time around.

Thanks!