Anyone Here Been Trading 20+ Years?

Been at it for 40 years. Commission back then was around 3% round trip. So no day trading.
A usual short term trade was 1 to 2 weeks. The basics of trading are the same now as they were then. The major difference is the speed of price movement. That results in so many more intraday trends, which, of course, provide more good entry/exit points. So if you are a TA trader, today is heaven!
 
tommo said:
Would you say the two go hand in hand? Higher costs/barrier to entry = easier profits.

It kind of makes sense as less people = less competition
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Difficult question, because many factors influenced my results. I was a newbie, so did not make much money, make much more now. But probably because of knowledge that I have now that I did not have then.

On the other hand, you needed more capital to trade than you need now. So at that time rich people could afford this, poor people not. So the most important factor was money. Nowadays the most important factor is not money, but knowledge and qualifications of the trader. With $3000 you can beat a millionaire in trading.

Decades ago volume was much lower, so that was a handicap too. I remember that in the 90’s trading 20 contracts in the S&P (500$ a point, so equal to 100 contracts Emini) took 20 to 40 seconds before you had a complete fill. You also needed a phone to place orders. Today these orders are filled very fast.
 
i am nobody said:
On the other hand, you needed more capital to trade than you need now.
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You can say that again. Where I am(Japan) I had to put up $200,000 just to open a margin account to trade stocks, or the same to open an account to trade options. Now it's zero.
 
i am nobody said:
There were mostly amateurs trying to make money. Even idiots could sometimes make money.
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Ouch. Not sure I agree with that statement. I was referring to trading equity and index options. Equity trading in Nasdaq stocks required you to be a member because of set spreads. Trading NYSE stocks as a day trader could be done and I know many that were very good. They were called tape readers back then and would follow order flow by staring at the "tape". I was an Option MM and position traded, not day traded. I was a member of the exchange where you had to buy or lease a seat and pay monthly dues. It was not cheap. As you say "idiots" did not make money consistently, but you needed no formal education, although I have my BS-MBA. My NYU degree added very little to my career except I took a class called "The pricing of options, futures and other contingent claims." Basically, the BS model and when it works and when it does not. Also, that enabled me to build a simple program (In BASIC) to print our values every morning for my trading.

Bob
 
rmorse said:
Ouch. Not sure I agree with that statement. I was referring to trading equity and index options. Equity trading in Nasdaq stocks required you to be a member because of set spreads. Trading NYSE stocks as a day trader could be done and I know many that were very good. They were called tape readers back then and would follow order flow by staring at the "tape". I was an Option MM and position traded, not day traded. I was a member of the exchange where you had to buy or lease a seat and pay monthly dues. It was not cheap. As you say "idiots" did not make money consistently, but you needed no formal education, although I have my BS-MBA. My NYU degree added very little to my career except I took a class called "The pricing of options, futures and other contingent claims." Basically, the BS model and when it works and when it does not. Also, that enabled me to build a simple program (In BASIC) to print our values every morning for my trading.

Bob
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I live in Europe. Almost no rules were applied. So no membership or anything else, just money. I speak about forex, and later futures, so no stocks, and only daytrading. What is saw there was hallucinant. Saw a few people make and lose millions. Lost myself one time too, over 50K in one day.
 
I started in 1986.

My edge at that time was being one of the only guys to get the SEC filings as they were filed by the big guys. I would actually go to the SEC and you could read the stuff the day after the paper filings were accepted. This was years before the internet or email and the only other guys there with me were entrepreneurs that were selling the info for subscription fees. I was always a few days ahead of their subscribers.

I followed and traded off the greenmailers of the time - Trump, Icahn, Boone Pickens, the Rales brothers and a few others. Greenmailing was made illegal a few years later.

Technology has changed everything in so many ways. The biggest advantage now (in my opinion) is the huge number of inexperienced retail traders bringing money into the markets.
 
learner2007 said:
Been at it for 40 years. Commission back then was around 3% round trip. So no day trading.
A usual short term trade was 1 to 2 weeks. The basics of trading are the same now as they were then. The major difference is the speed of price movement. That results in so many more intraday trends, which, of course, provide more good entry/exit points. So if you are a TA trader, today is heaven!
More...

Surely there were day traders in the 70's? Certainly were in the 80's.
 
Tommo, I think it comes down to this. All risk offers some economic benefit and payoff to those willing to accept it. That's why markets exist in the first place. There is no shortage of risk out there today vs 20 years ago. So it all comes down to in the end, those who can price and value risk better will do better then those who can't. The formula has worked for over 1000 years. Don't see why it would stop working now.
 
Maverick74 said:
Tommo, I think it comes down to this. All risk offers some economic benefit and payoff to those willing to accept it. That's why markets exist in the first place. There is no shortage of risk out there today vs 20 years ago. So it all comes down to in the end, those who can price and value risk better will do better then those who can't. The formula has worked for over 1000 years. Don't see why it would stop working now.
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Completely agree Maverick. Personally I'm making more money more consistently than ever before and I've seen a lot of evolution over the past 10 years.

However the regulatory landscape is changing and that makes me nervous. Hence I was reaching out to people that have seen 20-30 years of evolution to see how markets functioned in a high cost low volume environment which is what I anticipate we could be going back to whilst politicians view markets as an easy target to appease Joe Public
 
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