DT:
The flagship of my posts is brutal honesty. I criticize myself as hard as I criticize anyone else, and when I have a bad day / trade I don't blame luck nor market. When people ask me questions, I don't sugar coat stuff. Read Neo's posts about his chance at making it, and I told him flat out that his chance is "slim to none, barring a miracle or at least until his financial condition significantly improves".
As someone who only missed two games this year, all paper trading result to me, when you talk about day trading, is total garbage. When I talk to people about style/system/strategy, unless it is real time, real money, I am not interested. I DO NOT possess a college degree, and I hate it when people start to put together math analysis with equations touting what is luck, what is skill, when the person doesn't trade.
***You think that you can be good at day trading.***
If you really do feel that way, then you will not ask whether trading is skill or luck. When you begin to ask people bringing you evidence that their numbers come from skill or luck, those of us who have invested our blood and sweat into this game take it very personally. I can assure you that I too have a real chance to blow up, considering that even Soros did, but I can also assure you that the game will always be the survival of the fittest, adjust to the environment, and this is the same rule in any other business. For a company to survive among its competitions, it must adapt to the environment instead of holding on to the same old rule book, the same applies to traders. Those who has been super successful and then blew up is not because of sheer bad luck, it is because like the dinosaurs, they became obsolete.
***"everybody has a better weapons to a newbie trader" - are you sure?? are you really sure? Not every newbie is stupid, not every newbie knows nothing at all about trading. A lot of people who trade for months even years, are LOSERS.***
This is also the worst possible newbie mentality. If you look hard, you can ALWAYS find people who blew up bigger than you, in a worse situation than you are. I had the same mentality and it was thrown out of the window after I lost 19 out of 20 games to start my career. A newbie is stupid, he takes hits, he becomes smarter, but you don't learn the stove is hot until you touch it, and some people learn it after first a few burns, some people don't learn it until they lose their hand.
Always, always look for someone better than you as a benchmark, that's the only way to play the game, people worse than you are more like alerts, if you do worse than them it is time for a gut check.
All I can say is I put in at least as much effort as you did when I started, and I basically devoted myself to the market the same way a zealot devoted himself to his religion, and it took me three and a half months to get that most important first check. I was VERY stupid, I did have far worse weapons than I do now, both physically (less monitors, higher commissions, smaller size) and mentally (experience, experience, experience, something you do not learn from paper trading nor books).
***Will you play a game, if you know, that every strategy that you use in this game has a expected P/L =0? Or even below zero, when you add commissions costs? Of course NO! Is this pointless?***
How the hell do you know "every strategy" has a expected P/L = 0 until you have traded a few? I firmly believe that it is the trader who makes the style, not the style that makes the trader. And you will never find out by sitting on the sideline without actually playing the game.
***That's why I wanted a statistical proof, that trading is not that kind of game. That there're systems, traders ( like Hitman ) who have positive results from big number of trades.
"Believe in my heart"... you say... there's nothing to BELIEVE in, trading is not a religion, show me numbers, show me stats.***
Life is not all about stats and probabilities, if you truly believed in probabilities, you already know that 8 out of 10 traders will fail, why bother with it? You have already seen the stats, you know the odd is against you from the get go, and if you don't believe in yourself, you will not make it.
Trading doesn't have to be a religion, but it sure is hard to become the best of the best at something without treating it like one.
The flagship of my posts is brutal honesty. I criticize myself as hard as I criticize anyone else, and when I have a bad day / trade I don't blame luck nor market. When people ask me questions, I don't sugar coat stuff. Read Neo's posts about his chance at making it, and I told him flat out that his chance is "slim to none, barring a miracle or at least until his financial condition significantly improves".
As someone who only missed two games this year, all paper trading result to me, when you talk about day trading, is total garbage. When I talk to people about style/system/strategy, unless it is real time, real money, I am not interested. I DO NOT possess a college degree, and I hate it when people start to put together math analysis with equations touting what is luck, what is skill, when the person doesn't trade.
***You think that you can be good at day trading.***
If you really do feel that way, then you will not ask whether trading is skill or luck. When you begin to ask people bringing you evidence that their numbers come from skill or luck, those of us who have invested our blood and sweat into this game take it very personally. I can assure you that I too have a real chance to blow up, considering that even Soros did, but I can also assure you that the game will always be the survival of the fittest, adjust to the environment, and this is the same rule in any other business. For a company to survive among its competitions, it must adapt to the environment instead of holding on to the same old rule book, the same applies to traders. Those who has been super successful and then blew up is not because of sheer bad luck, it is because like the dinosaurs, they became obsolete.
***"everybody has a better weapons to a newbie trader" - are you sure?? are you really sure? Not every newbie is stupid, not every newbie knows nothing at all about trading. A lot of people who trade for months even years, are LOSERS.***
This is also the worst possible newbie mentality. If you look hard, you can ALWAYS find people who blew up bigger than you, in a worse situation than you are. I had the same mentality and it was thrown out of the window after I lost 19 out of 20 games to start my career. A newbie is stupid, he takes hits, he becomes smarter, but you don't learn the stove is hot until you touch it, and some people learn it after first a few burns, some people don't learn it until they lose their hand.
Always, always look for someone better than you as a benchmark, that's the only way to play the game, people worse than you are more like alerts, if you do worse than them it is time for a gut check.
All I can say is I put in at least as much effort as you did when I started, and I basically devoted myself to the market the same way a zealot devoted himself to his religion, and it took me three and a half months to get that most important first check. I was VERY stupid, I did have far worse weapons than I do now, both physically (less monitors, higher commissions, smaller size) and mentally (experience, experience, experience, something you do not learn from paper trading nor books).
***Will you play a game, if you know, that every strategy that you use in this game has a expected P/L =0? Or even below zero, when you add commissions costs? Of course NO! Is this pointless?***
How the hell do you know "every strategy" has a expected P/L = 0 until you have traded a few? I firmly believe that it is the trader who makes the style, not the style that makes the trader. And you will never find out by sitting on the sideline without actually playing the game.
***That's why I wanted a statistical proof, that trading is not that kind of game. That there're systems, traders ( like Hitman ) who have positive results from big number of trades.
"Believe in my heart"... you say... there's nothing to BELIEVE in, trading is not a religion, show me numbers, show me stats.***
Life is not all about stats and probabilities, if you truly believed in probabilities, you already know that 8 out of 10 traders will fail, why bother with it? You have already seen the stats, you know the odd is against you from the get go, and if you don't believe in yourself, you will not make it.
Trading doesn't have to be a religion, but it sure is hard to become the best of the best at something without treating it like one.
