How much did you lose on the journey to becoming profitable?

[themickey]

If I consistently lose money as a trader, am I gambling?
If I consistently win money as a trader, am I gambling?
Btw, a trader is not someone in this context a salesman or textile trader, he/she's a speculator.
We are buying something in the hope a greater fool comes by to take off from our hands something like a hot potato which we wish to dump and run.
Edit: our mkt closed up 0.4%, my positions up 0.72%.
Not ready to sell yet as I am the greater fool holding expecting prices to continue up in the short term.

 

[gaussian]

For real, the more you talk the more dumb you sound. And the sad thing is you're trying to sound smart and being serious. The definition of gambling most people use here is a bet where the odds are 50/50.

First,

For real

For being so intelligent you talk like you're a 20 year old robinhood YOLOer.

I will be ignoring you and "my IQ is 130" dude after this. But I feel like you deserve a final salvo.

I dont do this to be smart. To be honest, I'm not as smart as many of my peers who are legitimate employed quants. These posts aren't mental masturbation for me. I posted that to hopefully enlighten people to the existence of a field called Probability Theory. It's basis is in gambling, and finding edges. I came to this field because I was a person losing chunks of cash in poker tournaments and blackjack. If you do not think you are playing a game of chance, you are woefully mistaken. I fully recognize I am a gambler, with a small and consistent edge that provides me reasonable profit. I am by no means an expert, but I can quantify my edge mathematically, and I find that very satisfying by itself. Related to the OP's question I can completely tie my lack of "blowing my account up" to my knowledge of probability. There is no question. If you bet the house on a 99% chance to win, and your number is up with 1% - is it then a gamble? Do you only consider it a gamble when you lose money? Is it only a gamble when its (according to you) a crazy bet? This is naivete of the situation. It doesn't mean you're a bad trader, it just means you're unaware of the actual odds. It's akin to playing the lotto, striking the 1:1,000,000,000 chance, and considering yourself an expert in forecasting. The actual numbers just tell a different story. There is nothing wrong with being a gambler. There is everything wrong with playing a game without an edge. Since you aren't buying and holding, you are certainly gambling, especially if you're playing with instruments that can't be bought and held - such as derivatives.

For you, I wish you and your 130 IQ fan boy best. I honestly do. If you think you have an edge and can't quantify it mathematically you have what is called a prayer. I pray it works for you. Adios.

To the OP and mods -

I'm sorry for causing a ruckus in your thread. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

 

[syswizard]

while I was busy trading futures on intuition mostly I remmember the second Asian crash in 1997 where I was having a boatload of short puts and a heavy futures position and the market opened 10% against me. I had a loss and my account went from positive to a loss of about 300K, I made 50 k back daytrading that day but had to unwind my position which was almost at the exact day. NY opened down -500 point and then staged a kind magical reversion in a half hour to +500 but that came too late for me. I was working at broker's office and had to pay off my debts the next few years. Learned to things about this: never short options naked and make sure you have some kinda algo when trading to guide
you.

DUDE: Victor Niederhoffer made a ton of money shorting options....until he "blew up".

 

[jinxu]

First,



For being so intelligent you talk like you're a 20 year old robinhood YOLOer.

I will be ignoring you and "my IQ is 130" dude after this. But I feel like you deserve a final salvo.

I was going to write you're wasting your time "ignoring" people since you can still see all posts if you don't sign into ET. But it looks like you didn't really ignore anyone.
Just in case you didn't know. Don't you know that a lot of intelligent people like to "dumb" themselves down.

If you are a good trader, you might be a dummy
Discussion in 'Psychology' started by Pekelo, Jan 9, 2019.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/if-you-are-a-good-trader-you-might-be-a-dummy.328701/

I dont do this to be smart. To be honest, I'm not as smart as many of my peers who are legitimate employed quants. These posts aren't mental masturbation for me. I posted that to hopefully enlighten people to the existence of a field called Probability Theory. It's basis is in gambling, and finding edges. I came to this field because I was a person losing chunks of cash in poker tournaments and blackjack. If you do not think you are playing a game of chance, you are woefully mistaken. I fully recognize I am a gambler, with a small and consistent edge that provides me reasonable profit. I am by no means an expert, but I can quantify my edge mathematically, and I find that very satisfying by itself. Related to the OP's question I can completely tie my lack of "blowing my account up" to my knowledge of probability. There is no question. If you bet the house on a 99% chance to win, and your number is up with 1% - is it then a gamble? Do you only consider it a gamble when you lose money? Is it only a gamble when its (according to you) a crazy bet? This is naivete of the situation. It doesn't mean you're a bad trader, it just means you're unaware of the actual odds. It's akin to playing the lotto, striking the 1:1,000,000,000 chance, and considering yourself an expert in forecasting. The actual numbers just tell a different story. There is nothing wrong with being a gambler. There is everything wrong with playing a game without an edge. Since you aren't buying and holding, you are certainly gambling, especially if you're playing with instruments that can't be bought and held - such as derivatives.

For you, I wish you and your 130 IQ fan boy best. I honestly do. If you think you have an edge and can't quantify it mathematically you have what is called a prayer. I pray it works for you. Adios.

To the OP and mods -

I'm sorry for causing a ruckus in your thread. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

Anyways, you may be honest enough to say you're not smart but you still have that "I know everything about the market and am never wrong" mentality. You think you're the first person to say you'll never lose. I would argue with you and there is a lot of things in this post is just flat out wrong.

But....tell me this...what is the benefit to me taking time to explain things to you when I could be watching TV instead? That is what's most of the good traders think when they go to ET here. If 95% of traders are loser then it would make sense that 95% of posts here are junk. I'm done.

 

[themickey]

If 95% of traders are loser then it would make sense that 95% of posts here are junk.

LOL. Cant argue with that!
Are you one of the 5%?

 

[jinxu]

LOL. Cant argue with that!
Are you one of the 5%?

That's up to you to figure out. I assume everyone here are 95% loser even if it's mathematically incorrect.

 

[snowman80]

it’s been a while since i peeked into the mesmerizing world of et. i see that century old debates are still raging. i would like to deposit some of my thoughts on the issues raised in this thread for your benefit and mine:

1. stop wasting your time and energy arguing about abstract words like ‘gambling’ or ‘trading’, settle on something in between like ‘betting’ and move on

2. on the 1% rule...imho i think it’s best to look at your target max loss per bet in terms of a range and adjust it dynamically based on some metric of prevailing volatility. target max loss per bet is a significant element of any approach. altering it can make or break your method. conceivably, a method may not ‘work’ with a 1% target max loss but it may ‘work’ just fine with a 2-3% max loss target.

3. on ‘risk management’...most plungers cannot identify risks present in their process, let alone make an attempt to manage them.

 

[schweiz]

1. stop wasting your time and energy arguing about abstract words like ‘gambling’ or ‘trading’, settle on something in between like ‘betting’ and move on

3. on ‘risk management’...most plungers cannot identify risks present in their process, let alone make an attempt to manage them.

 

[leflos]

3 months in and I'm up around 10%. I don't plan to ever bust my roll. This is something that will be with me for my entire life, I don't need to go and try to make a milli this year. Maybe next year though


**** Also, I see alot of people trading things like forex at maximum leverage and wondering where they went wrong. Some people might want to do some research first before trading/investing......

 

[JaneBulan]

I've lost about 3k USD of my local currency.
What was the main problem? I didn't pay attention to fundamentals and important news. All my activity was based on technical analysis.
Also, I lost some cash due to lack of experience. It'd better use practice account first to understand the platform, especially if it's totally free like here (I only entered my email).