Is experience at a prop firm required to be a successful retail trader?

[S-Trader]

I understand the idea of trading. Find a strategy that has higher than a 51% success rate, keep applying the strategy consistently with discipline and you will make money.

Why "higher than a 51% success rate"?

 

[ElectricSavant]

If I were to tell you that losing is the prerequisite and that giving up might be an extreme for some...but then they come back.

I believe you have to be good when trading as you are exiting and entering with thousands of traders competing to be profitable.

Trading with the goal of being with the upper 0.001% is the hardest thing I have ever undertaken in my life.

ES

The problem with most of the answers for me is that they are talking about the latter stages of trader development IMHO. I think one needs to think in stages. If your first stage is to be able to position yourself somewhere you can observe real traders making real money, I think it would be hugely beneficial. At the least, you should be able to make a distinction between BS/gambling and a real edge. I don't see many people on this forum mentioning how they got started and what helped them evolve into the traders they are now(understand it's personal). I will venture a guess that there are NO successful traders trading strategies that they developed on their own in a complete vacuum. Everything is a variation of something else they have learned from someone/somewhere. If you read Market Wizzards you can see they were all/most in the industry and/or had mentors(friends/family). IMHO It is very difficult, if not impossible, to figure out on your own if what you read online is BS or not.

 

[gambleditall]

The problem with most of the answers for me is that they are talking about the latter stages of trader development IMHO. I think one needs to think in stages. If your first stage is to be able to position yourself somewhere you can observe real traders making real money, I think it would be hugely beneficial. At the least, you should be able to make a distinction between BS/gambling and a real edge. I don't see many people on this forum mentioning how they got started and what helped them evolve into the traders they are now(understand it's personal). I will venture a guess that there are NO successful traders trading strategies that they developed on their own in a complete vacuum. Everything is a variation of something else they have learned from someone/somewhere. If you read Market Wizzards you can see they were all/most in the industry and/or had mentors(friends/family). IMHO It is very difficult, if not impossible, to figure out on your own if what you read online is BS or not.

Exactly! Most of the best traders did work in industry before venturing out on their own.

Why don’t you start? How did you find your edge. What is the process to find your edge?

Why "higher than a 51% success rate"?

Yeah actually you don’t need higher than 51% but then you will need higher risk reward. So my mistake.

 

[Patelchet]

Gamblers sound like women who keep boyfriends who are idiots, but keep them anyway. there is an uncontrollable desire for validation from an outside source, instead of from ones inner self.

Is that inherent confirmation bias we all have?

 

[qlai]

How did you find your edge.

Still searching ...

What is the process to find your edge?

Well that's the problem for the retail guy isn't it! You are left at the mercy of online educators. FWIW, I think the process is to identify the type of trading which fits your personality (not that easy as you need to understand yourself well). Once identified, find people doing similar style and learn from them - you can use them as a benchmark as market conditions change. Finally, trade the style to let experience refine it into your own unique style, hopefully creating your edge.

 

[Mnewton]

It sure does help as there are others there doing the same thing and you can pick up on good ways to trade

 

[ElectricSavant]

I actually believe in traders helping traders...dash the thought this is 2018.

ES

It sure does help as there are others there doing the same thing and you can pick up on good ways to trade

 

[ElectricSavant]

There are a lot of people here in ET that I would like to thank for your support and help. You know who you are

Thank You.

ES

 

[Handle123]

Still searching ...


Well that's the problem for the retail guy isn't it! You are left at the mercy of online educators. FWIW, I think the process is to identify the type of trading which fits your personality (not that easy as you need to understand yourself well). Once identified, find people doing similar style and learn from them - you can use them as a benchmark as market conditions change. Finally, trade the style to let experience refine it into your own unique style, hopefully creating your edge.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s I was stumped on how to make profits in long term commodities, and I paid big bucks for mentors, which never worked. It dawned on me the commercials seldom lost, they either grew the product or processed the product and hedged with futures. I had to relearn charting in a different way, not as a retail trader but as a commercial trader, and it evolved over years to decades to where I am today. And it is almost impossible to learn by those doing the same as I don't see ADM opening their doors to let anyone to watch them.

One's "edge" changes as time goes by, what you once thought was important, 40 years later, completely opposite.

"Traders helping traders"..sounds like a Woodie infomercial? Trade the CCI without price bars. The blind leading the blind, cause anyone that is good is trading and won't give up their edge to retail or worse the sharks who are waiting for others to post anything worth while. The ones who scream the loudest, don't want to learn how to program and test their ideas, they want others to work their rumps off and display all the stats, then later on cry when something doesn't work. Unless you learn how to do it yourself, you will never be able to adapt. Either way, after a few pages on the forum, they get attacked by those who don't trade but tell their wives they are "learning" so they don't have to go back to getting a job making coffee.

I have gotten many ideas off the forum and when tested, 99% fail, perhaps I didn't understand clear enough of posters idea but most likely patterns works during isolated periods. Then try to identify these periods takes much more time then discover very few trades exist where it might work out.

 

[zdreg]

I have gotten many ideas off the forum and when tested, 99% fail, perhaps I didn't understand clear enough of posters idea but most likely patterns works during isolated periods.

that is why HFT traders have programmers on their team,who then share in the profits