I guess the other poster forgot about BP so I didn't blast him.
Are you a successful at home day trader with no other source of income who began with modest means?
- Thread starter JTrades
- Start date
I guess the other poster forgot about BP so I didn't blast him.
Thanks to the traders who shared some stories about the old days of the Tech bubble and how the markets used to work. I have only been trading seriously for maybe 5 years now and while I've found more than my share of edges, I can also see what's left is a tiny fraction of what I could have made with these ideas 5-10 years earlier.
I have been working as a broker for the last 20 years, and I never saw a client that was sucessuful at daytrading.
They probably exist... I never saw one...
I can confirm this. I was asked in past to trade accounts for clients from a broker. Their explanation was that clients all lost money all the time and I was consistently profitable. If I would trade these accounts the broker should not have to find new clients all the time to replace the clients that lost everything or stopped because of heavy losses. And I could charge commissions with which I eventually became able to start trading only my own money.
Just to clarify: unlike the clients, you were not day trading to achieve your profit? Otherwise you'd be actually proving that successful day traders exist (yourself) instead of proving the opposite.
Going for singles and doubles and not trying for home runs is the way to go IMO. Get in .. and out of a trade and capture just a small part of any move. I leave $$ on the table all the time. No one can pick optimal entry and exit points. But you can't go broke taking profits.
I was and I am still daytrading. My statement did not mean that daytrading cannot be profitable, my statement was to confirm that MOST people are not able to do it. Like most people will never succeed to finish university, like most people will never succeed to become a chirurgic specialist.Just to clarify: unlike the clients, you were not day trading to achieve your profit? Otherwise you'd be actually proving that successful day traders exist (yourself) instead of proving the opposite.
Difficult is not the same as impossible.
Yes you can go broke from taking profits. Traders have winning but also losing trades. If you take to quickly profit you might not make enough profit anymore yo cover for your losses. Your total profits should always exceed your total losses or you will lose money. So it is possible to go broke from taking (too small) profits.
Well it's worked for me. I have 85 - 90% winning trades in a given year. And before I get questions on how I can have that high of a percent of winners it's what I alluded to earlier .. not going for home runs and taking small profits.
And the fallacy in your statement above is that you're insinuating that the losing trades are apparently larger losses that would more than offset profits. If one has discipline then they exit with small losses when they realize they were wrong on the trade.
No doubt about it. But the opposite is also true, you wont get wealthy without taking big risks. These risks mean you could wipe out --- that potential is critical to large gains.