Its impossible to be profitable in trading as a retail trader

I read somewhere that trading books have caused possibly the largest wealth transfer in history. Boy, were they right. I have self taught myself technical analysis, fundamental analysis and price action. I have read hundreds of books on the subject. And over the years of trading NONE of them have been even close to profitable. Their only edge is that they just happen to time their trades in either strong bull or bear markets.

Believe me I have backtested countless strategies from candlesticks to MACDs to price action to FX correlations to Presidential Elections to Order book correlations to even solar and lunar cycles at one point. And guess what. None of them give you any kind of edge whatsoever because that information is already public and whoever disclosed it in the first place is probably rich by now with his or her book sales.

correlations that occur are only temporary. Quants and Hedge funds try to scalp this inefficiency. But even then, this can never be a consistently profitable strategy as competition increases to try to capitalize on this inefficiency. Eventually, this inefficiency is simply evaporated. And oh look: Hedge funds are dropping like flies if you read the news now because of so much competition. The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay liquid. And those who can stay liquid already have a ton of capital to win through sheer trial and error alone. Thats why 99% of retail traders consistently fail. They just don’t have the capital to win through trial and error.

As a closing statement, I would like to reveal a little secret. If you buy today and sell tomorrow, you have a 50/50 chance it will either go up or down. This is true for virtually every stock, index or forex out there. Go ahead and backtest it yourself if you want. (Boy, are those 1% of profitable traders laughing their guts out right now!)

Now that I look back, if I just followed the buy and hold strategy with most of my trades I would have been a millionaire within 5 years.
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Good points Quant#9;
but buying in a big bear market [or even BEAR Stearns, LEH,GM,DAL....] can kill you or anyone-not a prediction. PS There are lots more than 1% profitable traders, if you count investors in the group + i do-some what............................................Thanks
 
I read somewhere that trading books have caused possibly the largest wealth transfer in history. Boy, were they right. I have self taught myself technical analysis, fundamental analysis and price action. I have read hundreds of books on the subject. And over the years of trading NONE of them have been even close to profitable. Their only edge is that they just happen to time their trades in either strong bull or bear markets.

One thing is clear to me: you are surely not a quant. You clearly don't have the intelligence needed to become a quant. A quant would never say "it is impossible..." he would rather say "for me it is impossible..." Or "it is very difficult...". Smart people know they don't know everything and stay humble. Your attitude, or arrogance, shows that you are convinced you know everything.
If you did all you described, you clearly have no analytical capabilities at all, as you didn't find anything. So you will never find any relation whatsoever anywhere. And that ability is maybe the most important thing in becoming a successful trader.
Let a monkey read the books you read, and study all you studied, and he will come to the same conclusion as you.


Believe me I have backtested countless strategies from candlesticks to MACDs to price action to FX correlations to Presidential Elections to Order book correlations to even solar and lunar cycles at one point. And guess what. None of them give you any kind of edge whatsoever because that information is already public and whoever disclosed it in the first place is probably rich by now with his or her book sales.
This statement confirms all I said before. You know everything and you are god.
 
. e thing is clear to me: you are surely not a quant. You clearly don't have the intelligence neededto become a quant. A quant would never say "it is impossible..." he would rather say "for me it is impossible..." Or "it is very difficult...". Smart people know they don't know everything and stay humble. Your attitude, or arrogance, shows that you are convinced you know everything.
If you did all you described, you clearly have no analytical capabilities at all, as you didn't find anything. So you will never find any relation whatsoever anywhere. And that ability is maybe the most important thing in becoming a successful trader.
Let a monkey read the books you read, and study all you studied, and he will come to the same conclusion as you.



This statement confirms all I said before. You know everything and you are god.

"I have read hundreds of books on the subject." LOL. Yeah, sure he did.
 
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"I have read hundreds of books on the subject." LOL. Yeah, sure he did.
Maybe he did? What he didn't do is prepare his mind for success before reading whatever he read. I glimpsed a few headlines about the moon recently. Yeah, I agree there's no connection to trading just like those who need to remind us how silly Astrology is but instead of lingering on those headlines or worse spending inordinate time gathering fodder to facitlate trolling ET ... instead I made a connection that strengthened the physical properties, or my understanding of something,...that was already on my mind :) ..obviously something chart related.

My hope is the suckers we compete with find what they want within that and belabor the sillyness of where I found truth because eventually it will bring them the answer they're looking for.

What will guys like Q** have after they've nearly completed whatever their goals are in sharing their ideas that we can't trade?

I'm not about to go look for the psych forum but I will share some tuff love here, which can be taken as fatherly advice or taken to heart and utilized properly.

After they succeed in sharing their message the time will have ran out for them to find the solutions that would have enabled them to beat 99.95% of everyone else trying to do what they've given up on.
 
Those who can't DO teach (or write books) this is the absolute truth about Trading.

if you want to get even a small chance at being profitable with trading the fist thing you need to do is to throw away all your trading books and start from scratch.

Find an instrument that gives you opportunities i.e. that is liquid enough, whose price moves enough daily (at least 2% of its value, if a Stock)

Then you need to spend as much time as needed looking at live charts for that single instrument until you develop the instinct for its PA

Now you are ready to trade, start small, protect yourself, take profit and losses frequently, keep track of high TF but trade the small ones.

rinse and repeat, eventually scale up

Trading is as simple/hard as you make it be...

good luck!
 
Q3D, as ever, can apparently be relied on to enter a large assortment of random threads for the sole purpose of taking a shot at his personal bête-noire, Al Brooks. It's almost fascinating, albeit in a pretty macabre kind of way. Now that's real trolling, for you.)

Yeah, Q3D really has it in for poor Al! Hey Q3D, what on Earth has Al done to you?
 
I partially agree. Regular people with their desktop computer can't be profitable. However hedge funds with High Frequency Trading and their supercomputer capable of split second trades with almost no spread are definitely making billions out of it.

That's not true at all, I started as retail, private trader and stayed that way for 17 years and was in process of doing first automated system back then for Long Term method, and finally leased a seat in md 90s. Only in last six years have I hired full time staff and gotten heavy into automation, but again, only my funds. I don't own any Supercomputers, none of my systems require that, but I do use phone lines instead of cable or wifi. I don't think the speed of PC as important as the Internet speed and dedicated lines.

The irony is that to win as a retail trader you need to be better than the majority of professionals.

Now your thinking that you going to have to beat a Professional trader, come on, what you are really saying you going to have work damn hard to get a well back tested Trading Plan and then trade it as Trading Plan is written, you don't consider trading to be a business. What did you think, 30-40 beer guzzling guys going to be half drunk in front of their PCs and you were going to just show up and grab their money? EVERYONE who opens an account to trade is telling the world they are a professional and they know how to trade. Money is too easy to come by in old USA, let's change the rules, you have kids? Ok, new rule, every ten trades, if not profitable, the exchange is going to chop off one finger of one of your kid, is that enough for you to get serious at learning how to trade? 95% People are fricking lazy who trade retail, traders who lease and buy seats are telling all I want to make money, and people who constantly staying retail are quietly mumbling the game is rigged. You learn to play the game, you make money, that simple.

Years ago out of boredom, I use to teach traders how to trade and charged them a fee to be paid out of profits, but what often happens, people will intentionally say the systems/methods don't work so they don't want to pay. So I quit for few years and changed it to mentoring few traders and they have to endure "WTF were you thinking comments", the ones who become successful and show they doing well for a year, I offer them to trade an account for me and they receive a percentage, so it becomes much more of a win win situation, some been trading for me ten years and I have never taken a dime out except for taxes, so accounts get bigger and they trade more volume. I have fourteen of them who trade for me and they trade their own accounts. But the days of me backing someone, came down to one bad apple spoiled the bunch event once and I stopped that. This other way is much safer for me, what's funny, all of them thought this was going to be a one week training and they be ready to go and with some they were still training after a year, if I didn't think they had a chance, I cut them loose after 4-5 months. Really takes a two year promise of working with someone if one mentors anyone, cause to show people how to trade is not cut and dry of learning some system, they do 40-70 hours weeks of study and back testing, I have never made it easy for them. But there is a difference, I show them direction of what is going to work than what they been doing of fumbling around for more years. And no, don't have time for more, motel is full up, am not leaving the light on.

Retail works, where you get your skills, and jumping from retail to leasing a seat does not change skill level, you want to pay much less in fees cause you worked up the volume.

And at some point, trading gets real boring.
 
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