How is retail day trading anything but a gamble?

[ironchef]

@themickey
"Oh Volpri!
You mean well, put a lot of effort to your posts but to no avail. LOL.
99.9% of the world's population find it impossible to profit from trading the equities markets.
Doctors, lawyers, scientists, mathmaticians, engineers all predominantly fail to get rich from trading.
Buffett lately is struggling.
Fund managers and hedge funds largely underperform the index.
Algos frequently fail big time.
HFT is a decreasing business.
And you attempt to justify this statement???"

*Oh Mickey; I almost forgot about Mickey Mouse!!!

Algos are doing well, which explains why DIS, and UBER, went up considerably (squeezing shorts), in quarters, which historically should have been their worst. Fundamental Analysis is DEAD, and my Bsc. in Economics from Duke University is now worthless, and I accept that.

As for HFT, see how Citadel is doing...

Buffet is simply looking for deals that benefit him, at the cost of others. A shark, whose time is now done. And he has amazing PR. Google his last "successor", who was fired for insider trading. Very far in the Google search. He has dissappeared!

Mathematicians have gotten wildly rich from trading. Google Jim Simons (Medallion Fund), and I highly recommend reading "A Man for All Markets", by Edward O. Thorp. He initially discovered the formula for pricing warrants, then options, which Fischer Black and Myron Scholes later confirmed after being inspired by reading "Beat the Dealer", and "Beat the Market" by Thorp. They went onto win a Nobel Prize (which should have gone to Thorp!!!).

READ, MICKEY MOUSE!!!

And use a Dictionary, as my intuition tells me your vocabulary is on the lesser side?

@themickey

And Thorp was Griffin's mentor, showing him everything about his convertible bond strategy, back in 1990!!!

There would be no Citadel, or Nobel Prize, for Black-Scholes without EDWARD O. THORP.

Read, you dumb Mickey Mouse!!!

https://www.citadel.com/leadership/kenneth-c-griffin/

Please don't give @themickey a hard time. Unlike me, he has been trading for over 30 years and knows this business.

Your logic says:

1. Ed Thorp is smart, rich and is a mathematician, so unless you are a mathematician, you cannot be a smart and rich trader.

2. You never asked if @themickey is a mathematician. How could you assume he is not smart, not rich and not a mathematician?

Using that same logic, I must assume since you mentioned it with conviction, you must be smart, rich and a mathematician?

Have a good day sir.

 

[ChipShotTrader]

Please don't give @themickey a hard time. Unlike me, he has been trading for over 30 years and knows this business.

Your logic says:

1. Ed Thorp is smart, rich and is a mathematician, so unless you are a mathematician, you cannot be a smart and rich trader.

2. You never asked if @themickey is a mathematician. How could you assume he is not smart, not rich and not a mathematician?

Using that same logic, I must assume since you mentioned it with conviction, you must be smart, rich and a mathematician?

Have a good day sir.

I think @themickey has given plenty of people a hard time. I mean, he is doing it in this thread!!!

I have been trading successfully since September 1998, and it's the ONLY job I have ever had. I KNOW my business.

Ed Thorp is brilliant, and way ahead of his time. Markets have changed radically in the last 20 years, and I have witnessed it firsthand. Personally, I would have studied computer programming, or math.

No, you don't need math to be successful, but I realize the reason I am successful is due to the thousands of hours of screen time, aka, EXPERIENCE.

Frankly, starting as a brand new trader must be so much more difficult than ever before.

Using logic, I can make the assumption that @themickey does not hold a Mathematics degree. I don't know about the other 2 items. I would not mind taking an IQ test. I was part of the Gifted Program, since middle school.

And using the same logic, you can infer from the mention of my degree (which is now useless), that I am not a Mathematician. Oh, and I DEFINITELY have the other 2 items; one, since I was born, the other one, since the year 2000. It's been a truly amazing life!!!

But, I recognize timing is everything. I was simply at the right place, and at the right time.

Have a good day, Sir...

 

[trickshot]

Actually makes sense with the way the market was behaving since Dec 2018. And realize with a 27% you should double every 3 years, so doubling in 18 months is within your statistical spread.

Most of my profits were generated in the last 5 years because of compounding and growth.

I too doubled my (7 figure) account in the last 2 years, any decent trader should have been printing money during this time of great volatility.

I've always said that volatility is a trader's best friend, your profit potential is limited by trading range, and range is always much greater when vol is high, its just common sense. I recall arguing with a couple of newbs over this years ago on ET, I don't see those pikers posting here anymore, probably got killed trying to make 2 pts daily on the ES when it was averaging 5 pt range back in 2017.

Daytrading, retail or not, is fantastic when conditions are right (and you have the skills for it), its horrible and not worth the time when realized vol is extremely low.

 

[Tradex]

Daytrading, retail or not, is fantastic when conditions are right (and you have the skills for it), its horrible and not worth the time when realized vol is extremely low.

There is ALWAYS a financial instrument with high intraday range and high volume somewhere, RIGHT NOW, the trader just have to look/scan for it.

Never limit yourself to a specific market and never wait 5,000 years for a trading opportunity, trade what's moving NOW and ignore all the rest, that's all there is to it.

If the Yen is not moving switch to Soybeans futures or the emini Nasdaq or whatever stock or bond is trending like hell at the moment.

 

[trickshot]

There is ALWAYS a financial instrument with high intraday range and high volume somewhere, RIGHT NOW, the trader just have to look/scan for it.

Never limit yourself to a specific market and never wait 5,000 years for a trading opportunity, trade what's moving NOW and ignore all the rest, that's all there is to it.

If the Yen is not moving switch to Soybeans futures or the emini Nasdaq or whatever stock or bond is trending like hell at the moment.

Yeah but most traders only trade 1-2 products, it takes time to know a product, not advisable to run around chasing something just because its moving.

 

[KCalhoun]

I too doubled my (7 figure) account in the last 2 years, any decent trader should have been printing money during this time of great volatility.

I've always said that volatility is a trader's best friend, your profit potential is limited by trading range, and range is always much greater when vol is high, its just common sense. I recall arguing with a couple of newbs over this years ago on ET, I don't see those pikers posting here anymore, probably got killed trying to make 2 pts daily on the ES when it was averaging 5 pt range back in 2017.

Daytrading, retail or not, is fantastic when conditions are right (and you have the skills for it), its horrible and not worth the time when realized vol is extremely low.

Exactly right -- range is everything.. wide range multipoint clean charts are critical. Choppy low-vol charts are death, which is why I don't trade es... bc many days are chop on open

 

[colours]

I really hope it ISN'T just a gamble! After losing at this for nearly 6 years i'm certainly starting to wonder, but there do 'appear' to be some retail guys who make consistent profits.
Not sure if they're using the same tools as the rest of us or whether they have access to different information, though.
Personally, I've been using 'price action' and charts (5m, 60m and daily on the ES) all this time, but it's kinda been 6 years of frustration so far tbh.

 

[Tradex]

Yeah but most traders only trade 1-2 products, it takes time to know a product, not advisable to run around chasing something just because its moving.

In my opinion this is THE biggest mistake a trader can make: limiting himself to a couple of financial instruments. Over the years the opportunity cost becomes enormous.

The only goal of the trader is to make money NOW, no to "familiarize" himself with a couple of stocks, commodities or currencies that may or may not move for weeks or months, while good, fresh trading opportunities are popping up each day elsewhere.

 

[Tradex]

Personally, I've been using 'price action' and charts (5m, 60m and daily on the ES) all this time, but it's kinda been 6 years of frustration so far tbh.

Keep studying the stupid charts and one day something will click, I promise you.

Personally it took me more than 20 years of hard work, frustration and testing to figure this crazy trading business out. And I am still learning each day.

So study hard and don't give up.

 

[trickshot]

In my opinion this is THE biggest mistake a trader can make: limiting himself to a couple of financial instruments. Over the years the opportunity cost becomes enormous.

The only goal of the trader is to make money NOW, no to "familiarize" himself with a couple of stocks, commodities or currencies that may or may not move for weeks or months, while good, fresh trading opportunities are popping up each day elsewhere.

Diving into something that one isn't familiar with can be disastrous, imagine trading CL without the knowledge that inventory numbers are released every wed at 1030...