Improving Trading Skills
- Thread starter arzoo
- Start date
You make several requests of me in your post. There's probably not much I can say to oblige you, however.
I posted to be helpful to a person who revealed fairly clearly where he is. I do realize it is a very limited kind of help; just pointing out to someone that he is screwing himself continually and that he should stop and rethink what he is doing can only get the person to a place of ceasing. Even this limited help is often ineffective. He chose to be protective of where he is with his subsequent post and that is his choice of course.
You take issue with my referencing your post as part of the myth cycle swirling around in the person's head. I read your enumerated list of reasons for a person's lack of success and do not see how they help relieve the condition.
Take for instance your first comments: "1. Undercapitalization: Trading takes time to learn and, to learn, you must trade. Hence, the money almost always runs out before the person learns to become a trader. Not everyone who has a broker and can read a chart and trade is a trader."
The person who has been losing money for a year found what you wrote consistent with what he read over and over in all the books he has come across. Perhaps he has lost quite a bit of his stake doing his screw-up things and the thought has crossed his mind that he'll run out of money before he finally "gets it", or as you put it, "before the person learns to become a trader."
Evidently your comments which he has read and heard over and over in one form or another cause him to conclude that even though he has lost money doing his screw-up things over the last year, he has "made tremendous strides and can only have faith that in 3,6,9,12 months from now things will be alot better if I continue to work and learn." Then he describes personal drama he is engaged in about having given up stuff to continue to do his screw-up things in the market and he appreciates your comments and your support for struggling traders.
I'm just a small trader. I trade my own money and enjoy it immensely. I get offered money from people who want to help me make more money for myself and money for them as well. I have no interest of course. I got one request to teach someone what I do who I am still working with. I've learned that transference is a tricky thing.
Grob109 is a genius at it. His x,y,z, A,B,C stuff is a neat formulation of no risk learning. Anyone who has a grasp of a basic x about the market sees that your comments about undercapitalization are a bunch of hooey. The one year loser has no x, no y, no z. The screw-up things he says he will continue to do another 3,6,9,12 months won't get him x, y, or z. Too bad for him.
Interesting response and much appreciated. I would think that since Grob has nothing to sell and you are familiar with the x, y, z, A, B, C "stuff", it would be extremely helpful to the viewers here to learn what that formulation is. I would think that, since these guys seeking help here are so lost as both of you say and are hopeless on their current path and mine, it would serve your intention to respond if you would just provide pointers on the path that has worked for you. For example, if a guy starts a thread and is looking for desperate help as to why a breakout system does not work as he tries to buy highs to sell higher, then I would not respond by saying, "hey, idiot! You are on the wrong path and your system is a myth." Instead, I would try to explain that breakout systems work great in certain markets but he might be trading a market/product that is ranging in a shorter timeframe even though it might be in an uptrend on a longer time frame. I would expect that this would trigger that person to start using a longer term chart to see how that product has retraced and to try to get in on the retracements instead. It is a silly example really, but it would seem to me like this advice is useful to those who might not be seeing the big picture, like you and Grob are, and it actually provides some direction.
As I said before, my comments were for the original poster who feels he has achieved consistency and wants to go to the next level. I believe that my points summarize a few of the things that he might consider looking at to achieve this. The advice I provide is more pointed than stating that he is completely lost and is doomed to failure because he is not looking at the I, II, III, IV system without stating what that is.
It also amuses me that anyone here whether profitable or not can tell someone that they are screwed because they are on their current path or are doomed to pain and failure in their future based on the words written on a public forum. Now I'm not a wise-man with many decades of experience in trading or in life, but I know that these generalizations about another human being are nothing less than a bloated ego speaking and an attempt at driving fear into someone's thought process. Some might think, "oh my gosh.... I'm f**ked!" Others might find it simply to be the reflection of the writer's ego. Either way, it is what it is and I find it amusing.
I would ask you to elaborate about the formulations/processes that you speak of to something that is either applicable or can be pursued for further knowledge. Otherwise, it is just bait to have others think that they are inadequate and must be missing a few dozen points of IQ.
Grob and your posts exhibit a lot of intelligence, I feel. However, their purpose is what I'm interested in and I see them as incomplete for serving their purpose. So far, this has been a purely academic discourse with no directly applicable knowledge except for what little that Grob provided earlier (minus the stuff about what he did for MIT or Harvard - that's just ego stroking again).