Did Altucher fail as a trader?
- Thread starter Gueco
- Start date
This is actually very true and squares with my own experience, many of my old prop colleagues have pretty much been washed out of the game, there was this one guy who was really consistent and i can count on my hands the no of days he was down in a year. I think hes working in some sales job now LOL.
pretty sad man. I dont know why I am still hanging on for, just slowly bleeding to death I guess, but the problem is once you have done this for so long, you have lost any marketable skills in the real world job market. You need sizeable capital to start a business too so i figured that's out, have been thinking about maybe doing grad school but probably somewhat late in my early 30's. PhD at late 30's 40's dosent seem that attractive a prospect. The fucked up thing is all my classmates who actually went into the grad programs right after college all have doctorates now.
What aspect of this do you attribute to the political climate and policies coming out of Washington? I remembered 6 months into the Obama presidency, a lot of set ups, liquidity in many instruments and various stock symbols simply collapsed and they have never returned.
Ahh... the old trading is/isn't impossible argument again. Always such a popular subject on ET. 
People say the game has changed, the world has changed, the market has changed. But hasn't it always been that way? I've read interviews from the 1980's where people said the same things. Even back then there were very smart and highly educated people arguing that trading was impossible.
People say the game has changed, the world has changed, the market has changed. But hasn't it always been that way? I've read interviews from the 1980's where people said the same things. Even back then there were very smart and highly educated people arguing that trading was impossible.
Quote from dv4632:
Ahh... the old trading is/isn't impossible argument again. Always such a popular subject on ET.
People say the game has changed, the world has changed, the market has changed. But hasn't it always been that way? I've read interviews from the 1980's where people said the same things. Even back then there were very smart and highly educated people arguing that trading was impossible.
Some people I know with over 30 years of trading experience say trading became easier nowadays, not harder. Those are consistently profitable traders of course, not someone who looks for a way to rationalize his inability to trade with external reasons.
Actually, yes, I do know a guy who says trading is easier. He said that when he started trading in the 90's he was paying $30 each way in commisions, had to phone in his orders and risk getting ripped off by crooks, only got his charts once a week in the mail, got market news days late, and other financial news that's is readily available now was hard or impossible to get back then.
His opinion is that success in trading is about as likely as success in any other entrepeneurial venture, and that many people are always creating some kind of "boogeyman" that's out to get them and prevent them from having success.
His opinion is that success in trading is about as likely as success in any other entrepeneurial venture, and that many people are always creating some kind of "boogeyman" that's out to get them and prevent them from having success.
Exactly, I can't even imagine how that was like to trade over the phone with $30 commission per order compared to instant executions from the screen and many times cheaper commission structure now.
Trading since 2005... I can't say it got harder too, rather it got easier due to higher volatility on average than before the 2008 crisis.
Dude, there will always be making money no matter the circumstance, but not everyone is trading like you think with "2B" trendlines, backdoor entry, inside bars, breakout bars or whatever you call it.
We are playing the same game but on a different field.
A lot of the trades that we make based on knowledge of various execution algorithms, the interaction between different levels of the L2 book and correlation amongst the various execution venues are now gone. Deciphering the information leakage from these microstructures are not possible anymore due to the liquidity collapse. If altucher is intimately associated as he claims with hedge funds and prop firms, he will at least have an inkling of what I am talking about. This is not stuff you read about when you pick up that book from Amazon.com. Don't get me wrong, I am not dissing you, its great that you are making money but the point that Altucher is making is a very salient one.
MORAL: Don't dis the other guy, because we all make/lose money in our own way.
Altucher made the mistake of saying NO ONE could trade anymore...and continues and continues....
Big mistake! Altrucher has no idea what trades I make!!..and I could care less how other guys trade or whats on Amazon.