Quote from heynow:
Now when I say all daytraders, I'm talking about independent discretionary daytraders. I'm not talking about HFs running algo bots and doing market making, arbitrage, etc.
The reasons why I feel a daytrader is ultimately doomed for failure:
1 Limiting profits. The very nature of daytrading means that you are cutting your profit potential short by not holding for more than a day or a few hours. There are are moves that go on for days, weeks, and months with only the slightest pullbacks. These are the moves that make your year.
Yahtzi. Bingo. You got it. It's hard to let winners run when your MO is to be out before the close.
2 Daytrading is a very addicting and can become compulsive. The more frequently you trade the more addicted you become to the action. Also the more frequently you trade the more compulsive your actions become.
Not sure, it depends how much you think you can trust gut instinct in the market. This is what makes an edge
3 Irrational fear of holding overnight. Many daytraders think that daytrading is actually less risky than holding overnights because they think they have too much "headline" or "overnight" risk even when they have a position that is deep ITM.
Would agree
4 Daytraders often use excess leverage. Futures and options offer so much leverage that an intraday move can blow u out.
Nothing to argue about that.
5 Daytraders don't often diversify. Its really hard to intraday trade a portfolio, so most guys just concentrate positions in one or two instruments.
A couple instruments known very well might be just as important as how learn to trade other (instruments).
6 Great profit potential also means greater loss potential. Sure you can make 2x the daily range daytrading but more often you can lose 2x the daily range.
The nature of risk reward tradeoffs
7 Daytrading is ultimately a non scalable skill.
Disagree here, futures are scalable for any level of capital.
Is swing trading better? I'm just tired of trading intraday noise.
I can vouch that it is:
www.collective2.com/go/pairsqidqld
Not to mention that it's a whole style of trading that is very easy to get use to if you have faith in your own research. I certainly don't have any respect for discretionary trading, b/c there isn't enough evidence for me to believe that discretionary trading works. All of the c2 gamblers I've seen with no plan have failed. That site is as close as you're going to get to seeing how well you can do on your own compared to mechanical systems.
Swing trading is about finding signals that you sift through sufficiently in at least an hour after the close anytime. You take your position the next day based on what you think the market's going to do <i>the day after, not the day of your entry</i>, and that's the biggest factor that goes into succesfully swing trading. It's not just about picking your spot to enter, but about sufficiently guaging the move <i>the day after</i> that will lead to success swing trading. This is the best explanation of how to be succesful swing trading that you're going to find. I'll admit, I'm frequently down the day of my entry, but I don't let it run against me, and I don't panic sell. The next day is usually when I'll be presented with my out, and could occur as early as on the open the next day after my entry, or a couple day's after before I'm proven right. You can make at least $100k in a day if you're really willing to risk $25k on a trade, which I'm assuming is somewhere near your stop loss.
EOD daily systems produce larger profits, and, as long as you win both at least 60% of the time and your profits are sufficiently greater than your losses, you can win.
On the intraday scale is for algo's and market maker's playing volatility trades arbitraging out the few tenth's of a percent of market inefficiency to revert back to equilibrium. Daily systems allow you to summarize the market and pick a direction. This is more like what a person with a job is capable of doing.
It's doubtful, though, that discretion will succeed at this scale. Putting in the time to find that edge is needed.
But if you're making $600/day (hmm, over how long? A year?), and risking $75k in any time period given these returns per day doesn't sound particularly appealing, so I would understand why you'd want to try something else.