Is trading easy?

Is trading easy?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Fuck off cunt.

Results are only viewable after voting.
As pointless as this might sound, you gotta have an edge. Once you find the edge, it should be fairly easy from then on. Even if you lose money, you'll know why and wouldn't feel so frustrated as before.
 
Trading is very easy. Cheaper and more accessible than ever! Anyone can trade from anywhere with a few bucks and a phone. Think back just a few decades to making a phone call to deliver a verbal order that could cost you $50 or more.

So yeah, I would say trading is pretty damn easy!

Making a profit doing so? That's a lot harder!
 
NoahA said:
But I think you are overlooking that everything you say only comes from experience of having done everything else that didn't work.

We have talked about being red pilled before. How many true alphas are there out there? Maybe a handful of thugs that truly don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and seem to get all the girls, but these guys don't last long or reach any level of success in other aspects of their life. Most alphas I think end up being red pilled at some point in their life and grow into the person they become through lots of error and lots of work.

Likewise, for a trader to say its easy means he has struggled for quite a while. I'm way past the 2 year mark, but I probably have deeper issues that others don't.

Your point about needing only 10k to trade 1 ES is completely valid, but only to the guy who has it all figured out. This would be the guy that can trade 50 contracts of course, but if you limit him to 1, he will still know what to do.

I've read many guys say that at later stages of their careers they switch to swing trading. An hour chart looks just like a 5 min or 1 min chart after all, and looking for support and resistance is all the same on different time frames. Then its just a matter of nailing your entries and setting your stops. Capturing a 10 point ES move on 1 min chart is just the same as a 100 point hourly chart, but clearly less work is involved with the hourly chart. But you only get to this level when you become comfortable with the huge swings in PnL and develop the rock hard skill of not exiting before target is reaching, and taking stop religiously. Or at the very least have an iron solid reason for why you're changing the plan.

But this sort of trading only comes from years of experience. Anything is easy when you know every step of what you are doing and are prepared for every single curve ball that will arise. But getting to this point is a very long journey.
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You make a good point. My next step is to trade the daily time frame with precision.
 
jys78 said:
Trading is very easy. Cheaper and more accessible than ever! Anyone can trade from anywhere with a few bucks and a phone. Think back just a few decades to making a phone call to deliver a verbal order that could cost you $50 or more.

So yeah, I would say trading is pretty damn easy!

Making a profit doing so? That's a lot harder!
More...

Ah you got me... I asked the wrong question obviously!
 
NoahA said:
But I think you are overlooking that everything you say only comes from experience of having done everything else that didn't work.

We have talked about being red pilled before. How many true alphas are there out there? Maybe a handful of thugs that truly don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and seem to get all the girls, but these guys don't last long or reach any level of success in other aspects of their life. Most alphas I think end up being red pilled at some point in their life and grow into the person they become through lots of error and lots of work.

Likewise, for a trader to say its easy means he has struggled for quite a while. I'm way past the 2 year mark, but I probably have deeper issues that others don't.

Your point about needing only 10k to trade 1 ES is completely valid, but only to the guy who has it all figured out. This would be the guy that can trade 50 contracts of course, but if you limit him to 1, he will still know what to do.

I've read many guys say that at later stages of their careers they switch to swing trading. An hour chart looks just like a 5 min or 1 min chart after all, and looking for support and resistance is all the same on different time frames. Then its just a matter of nailing your entries and setting your stops. Capturing a 10 point ES move on 1 min chart is just the same as a 100 point hourly chart, but clearly less work is involved with the hourly chart. But you only get to this level when you become comfortable with the huge swings in PnL and develop the rock hard skill of not exiting before target is reaching, and taking stop religiously. Or at the very least have an iron solid reason for why you're changing the plan.

But this sort of trading only comes from years of experience. Anything is easy when you know every step of what you are doing and are prepared for every single curve ball that will arise. But getting to this point is a very long journey.
More...

By the way, since you're still struggling, I'll suggest that you take a break and come back. The market will still be here!
 
nooby_mcnoob said:
My next step is to trade the daily time frame with precision
More...

That's the HOly grail of trading. That's where the big bucks happen. Imagine being able to trade the daily S&P...,
If someone can trade the S&P, every day, combined with leverage....that is true eliteness. Not to mention the Money,

Go from playing with sparklers....to being the boat on the bay shooting the real fireworks into the air.

Investing is boring. Swing trading is boring. All, way, too slow.
To make real money at trading....you need to expand those revolutions,
 
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schizo said:
As pointless as this might sound, you gotta have an edge. Once you find the edge, it should be fairly easy from then on. Even if you lose money, you'll know why and wouldn't feel so frustrated as before.
More...

I recently encoded my "strategy" into a pine script and it was profitable. Not as profitable as me trading myself, since it took entries I wouldn't, but it had positive expectancy.

I think pinescript is a good initial test, if you can encode your approach in code.
 
nooby_mcnoob said:
By the way, since you're still struggling, I'll suggest that you take a break and come back. The market will still be here!
More...
My issues are mostly psychological. My trade stats have been very positive if I stuck to a strict stop and target. But of course, I think I know better in the moment and then fudge them. Its obvious my losses are bigger than my gains, but this isn't how much OCO orders are set up. LOL...

The other thing that has really helped is putting on a trade that is an inconsequential amount of money. Even trading micro contracts can sometimes hurt to be honest. A 5 point ES stop is $25, and get a few of those, next thing you know, you are down $100. If your account is only 5k lets say, this is 2% already. So losing 2% in one day isn't good if you don't have subsequent 2% gains.

By by trading the 3X ETF's, I have found that I can easily scale down the leverage. Trading just 25 shares of TQQQ for the NQ or UPRO for the ES proxy means that a trade can be scaled in, held longer, etc. And the fees are only about 30 cents for each order. I wish I did it sooner because trading the micro futures can still draw down an account pretty quickly with lots of losing trades.
 
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