How obsessive are you with trading?

If working hard was important, I'd trade a 12:30 volume spike (which doesn't exist). Being the smart worker I am, I trade the 2:30 spike. Hard workers come back from lunch early. To the extent that harder workers taker shorter lunches, this should serve as a good proxy for hard vs. smart.

I'd also be looking at a reporting bias on this one based on what I presume would be a high correlation with Type-A personalities and visibility as a trader (i.e. more likely to seek publicity and more likely to be a workaholic). Academia is not supportive of this also correlating with success. So the most visible successes and most visible failures will be those working hardest. (I have no data to support this--except the Type-A vs B and success--but it's something I suspect having worked with statistical samplings my entire professional life).

Edit: Or another example, when it hits the fan, spreads widen like the Hudson, you're in a full-blown panic looking at a 20% draw-down for the day, what do you do? Busy work pushing buttons? Close your computer and walk away? Steele your nerves and watch? Pull out your panic checklist you made during 15 mins of well considered clarity to put in place when you have 4 hours of pain and panic? Not to say there's a right or wrong answer here, but 'hard' work will probably work against you on a day like that.

In those scenarios, what if the hard worker instead had backtested all of the situations and would make a more informed decision. A simply smart worker might figure out everything on the spot because you know...he's that smart.
 
In those scenarios, what if the hard worker instead had backtested all of the situations and would make a more informed decision
What if the smart worker automated the test? What if the back test clouds your judgement of on-the-ground, fog-of-war perception? What if...what if, what if?...

There will always be long-hand and shortcuts. If I can shortcut and get a substantially accurate answer to decide sooner than someone who does it 'properly' can get the precise answer, that buys me time to be patient and wait. Or if I discount most of the day's data as noise based on my experience and feel of the market, but instead focus on discrete order flow within the noise, who's to say the more pervasive survey of the market is also more accurate (hint: it's not). Being right enough on a larger sample set is likely more effective than being more right on a smaller set.
 
What if the smart worker automated the test? What if the back test clouds your judgement of on-the-ground, fog-of-war perception? What if...what if, what if?...

There will always be long-hand and shortcuts. If I can shortcut and get a substantially accurate answer to decide sooner than someone who does it 'properly' can get the precise answer, that buys me time to be patient and wait. Or if I discount most of the day's data as noise based on my experience and feel of the market, but instead focus on discrete order flow within the noise, who's to say the more pervasive survey of the market is also more accurate (hint: it's not). Being right enough on a larger sample set is likely more effective than being more right on a smaller set.

Well, you started with the 'what-if' type scenarios. I was pointing out that you make a lot of assumptions to support your view, assumptions not really based on anything.
The only option is to look at the very successful traders and to which category they belong to. From what I've read and seen, they definitely work hard or maybe they're just doing it for appearances.
 
The only option is to look at the very successful traders and to which category they belong to. From what I've read and seen, they definitely work hard or maybe they're just doing it for appearances.

As I said:
I'd also be looking at a reporting bias on this one based on what I presume would be a high correlation with Type-A personalities and visibility as a trader (i.e. more likely to seek publicity and more likely to be a workaholic). Academia is not supportive of this also correlating with success. So the most visible successes and most visible failures will be those working hardest. (I have no data to support this--except the Type-A vs B and success--but it's something I suspect having worked with statistical samplings my entire professional life).

Of course it's all based on assumptions...but no more so than the alleged correlation between hard work and good work. In my experience I flatly reject that correlation, and in fact subscribe to its converse that hard work is bad work (or more accurately, less but more effective work, is better work). The correlation with hard work and good work seems very Luddite to me...long on belief, short on reason.

That said, I'm all for the people that do the hard work...the more effort people put into something, the more predictable (read: normalized) their results will become. That translates into opportunity for people who exploit the gap between precision (hard work) and accuracy (big picture)...like me.
 
Hello,

Working hard is not enough when it pertains to trading.

For example, someone can spends years and years trading a purchased trading strategy called Get_Rich Strategy which buys when 13ema cross 54 ema, vice versa for sell. Use hmmmm 40 tick stop loss, and 80 tick profit target. Done.

The trader works soooo hard to trade this and take every single trade. Then they lose big money for years.

Then the trader goes to Trading Get Rich Guru Trading School with a bunch of books and learns the special easy way to trade for for about 8 months. And studies HARD too. And loses again.

The trader worked extremely hard, but was not smart to ask the right questions to get 3rd party validation of these strategies and school they purchased.

Time loss and money loss...all due to working hard.

Trading is not like college, where you take allll the course and pass get a degree, then go make money working 9 to 5.
 
As I said:

Of course it's all based on assumptions...but no more so than the alleged correlation between hard work and good work. In my experience I flatly reject that correlation, and in fact subscribe to its converse that hard work is bad work (or more accurately, less but more effective work, is better work). The correlation with hard work and good work seems very Luddite to me...long on belief, short on reason.

That said, I'm all for the people that do the hard work...the more effort people put into something, the more predictable (read: normalized) their results will become. That translates into opportunity for people who exploit the gap between precision (hard work) and accuracy (big picture)...like me.

I still fail to see why hard work cannot also be effective work. From my experience anything worthwhile is not that easy, you need to work "hard" at it. Most things that are complex and consist of many components simply require time (work) because there are only so many short cuts to speed things up.
 
They say it's 99 percent perspiration, 1 percent inspiration.

Maybe in trading it's 99 percent execution, 1 percent strategy, where 'value investing' has tons of followers, but only 1 Warren Buffett (superior execution due to cash flow and long holding period, enabled by insurance company), likewise with 'momentum trading', where tons of guys who say they trade momentum, but still try to pick the tops and bottoms...

I think that apocryphal phrase normally attributed to Einstein was about genius. "Genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration".

I don't equate that terminology to trading. Trading is more like flying an aircraft as a pilot...

99% boredom, 1% sheer terror.
 
They say it's 99 percent perspiration, 1 percent inspiration.

Maybe in trading it's 99 percent execution, 1 percent strategy, where 'value investing' has tons of followers, but only 1 Warren Buffett (superior execution due to cash flow and long holding period, enabled by insurance company), likewise with 'momentum trading', where tons of guys who say they trade momentum, but still try to pick the tops and bottoms.

I'm curious to know how obsessive ur with trading?

a few famous examples that come to mind,
- Louis Bacon, who supposedly gets his staff to take pictures of his trading screens, dismantle everything and fly all the equipment to his vacation spots, where he trades

- Greg Coffey, the guy who made like $700mm by age 40, also rumored to trade 16-20 hours a day

- George Soros, there was a biography of him that said he never took a day off from trading in the early years before starting Quantum

- Paul Tudor Jones, where the documentary of him showed how he woke up at 4am to trade the Deutschemark back in the day

Trading is about 95 - 99 percent discipline, 1 - 5 percent luck once you have a proven strategy. Without a proven strategy, it's about 100 percent luck.
 
I still fail to see why hard work cannot also be effective work. From my experience anything worthwhile is not that easy, you need to work "hard" at it. Most things that are complex and consist of many components simply require time (work) because there are only so many short cuts to speed things up.
Its about focus . Work hard at the shit that matters and forget trivia . All about efficiency
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