I hope I won't offend you by mentioning that
for me, the exact opposite is true: I'd
far rather make a level-ish average of $100 over each of 100 small trades than do one big trade (a "90%-probability trade") that nets $10k.
I think I have three main reasons for feeling this way (they might turn out to overlap to some extent: that has a habit of happening whenever I say "I have three main reasons"!) ...
First, I'm not convinced that I really believe in "90%-probability trades" - not within my own normal trading parameters, anyway: I recognise, of course, that there can easily be trades with a 90% win-rate, but in my own mind (and I'm saying this after a lot of experience) these tend to be something of an artificial construct created primarily to illustrate that such a thing is possible, rather than regularly repeatable "real world trades" which constitute part of a method with a genuine, proven, positive expectancy.
Secondly, I'm a great believer in statistical significance and the reality that "there's safety in numbers" or "the principle of large numbers" or whatever else one wants to call it: the closer your win-rate is to 50% (on either side of it), the smaller is the number of trades one needs to observe to calculate a safe position-size with a high degree of confidence that one is basing it on genuine statistical significance. On some level, I don't "trust" trades with "90% confidence". I don't mean just "90% confidence in having the overall direction right": obviously an entry method is not a trading method - there's far more to it than that (and I understand that you know this already and meant far more than just that, too).
Thirdly, I feel very much safer and more confident trading "comparatively little and comparatively often" and have really found it both
far easier and
far more realistic, overall, to make a living that way than with other methods I've tried. Three consecutive accidents with the kind of position-sizing you mentioned in your original post would be an extraordinary disaster for me, giving me a far bigger drawdown than I've had for
many years. (And who hasn't, at some point, had three consecutive accidents, even with "very confident trades"?)
I'll be honest - again, very much hoping that I don't offend you - and mention that I saw your original post not long after you made it, was seriously perplexed by it, and decided not to reply only because I suspected that I'd misunderstood what you were saying: it didn't seem possible or reasonable for someone with a substantial account to be risking 6% of that account on a single position. (The way the thread's gone, I'm now more confident that you did indeed mean that, and I wish I'd replied earlier!).
I appreciate that everyone's concepts of risk management and degrees of risk aversion are different, and that we don't all have to agree all the time (and indeed that it would be boring if we did!), but honestly, I'm with the person who posted on the previous page, responding very succinctly to your observation that you want to increase your position-size still further, by saying simply "
Don't".
(He probably said in a word more or less what I'm saying in 13 paragraphs ... but that happens, too.)
I don't really agree with this. I can "kind of agree, up to a point", but I strongly suspect that you've gone well beyond that point in terms of practical realities.
Trading frequency is relevant, too - not just win-rate.
Very high win-rates tend to preceed accidents.
I understand the attraction of high win-rates (which of course arise from "being ultra-selective"), but I
strongly prefer the perspective that what matters isn't "being right as often as possible" but simply "steadily gaining more from the totals of winning trades than you lose from the totals of losers".
I wish you nothing but well with your 90%-confidence trades, but please excuse my mentioning that I'd be
distinctly uncomfortable with them, myself, and (call me conservative or even a skepchick) I strongly suspect that I'd probably assess them at a lower figure, too.
By weight of numbers, and by experience, and by calculating my position-sizing far, far more conservatively than I suspect you do, on the basis of far, far bigger sample-sizes than I'm ever going to manage to assemble with very high win-rates (and their concommitantly low trading frequencies). I avoid fear by having great confidence -
statistical confidence: every time I enter a trade, I can't tell you with any great confidence whether it will be a winner or a loser, but I can tell you with a
really high degree of confidence what the overall outcome of my next 300 trades will be.
And that's what matters to me. That confidence, for me, is another name for what you referred to in your title question as "lack of fear" or "getting over the fear". So there you go: at least I've answered your question directly, even if the answer was just my own perspective.
As far a high probability trades/investments ; older Turtles made most of those millions on low probability trades/BIG Trends,+ big leverage.
WARNING ;trading is not gambling@ all; done both. We used to gamble/ jerk .25 [quarters] out of of pool halls, as kids,; the fact that some commercial traders use .25 levels also has nothing to do with pool halls.Thanks