Natural trader ..

eves_banished_children said:
I said I was never a natural trader, and it really goes further than that, I was never interested in trading, the stock market, etc, on any level when I was young. My interest came later. As a programmer I have enjoyed finding solutions to a "problem" (the market) that gives you nearly instant feedback when your solution is good. It's almost like being in direct competition with other smart people, seeing who can get the best solution to the same problem, where there is no actual final solution but some solutions are better than others. It's even more entertaining that good solutions equal cash and prizes lol, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with why I became interested in it in the first place. Certainly I'm not in it because I care about the businesses, money lending, or anything like that, I couldn't care less if they were international mega-corporations or pizza coupons. My interest is more like the kind of interest an engineer might have in entering their robot into a maze running competition.
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To borrow from long ago.....

"Right on."

:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
eves_banished_children said:
I think there was more to it than just business skills. It wasn't just the relationships he could create with people, or being able to pull them into trading with him, etc, which I would consider very entrepreneurial ... but also that he knew his "book" or portfolio, he just had a knack for knowing exactly what cards were worth, how many he had (from memory), what he'd be able to trade them for, who wanted them, etc .. he just seemed to always be focused on how to turn whatever he had into "more", he had a gift for it.

Edit, and no, I don't know what he does now ... but i wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if he were a trader in the markets. Or a used car salesman lol.
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Children in general as in most of them are negotiating & dealing for something better...

I remember my own kids and my own childhood when there were kids in the lunch room trading away something in their lunch bag/container with someone else for something that they wanted. For example, whever I made my son tuna fish sandwhich...he would "trade" it away with someone that had a "ham or turkey sandwhich" or for a "bologny sandwhich with a bag of candy".

Bag of chips was a hot item to trade away for when I was a kid and still is for my kids at their own school.

Also, if you've grown up in a big family (lots of siblings)...this type of behavior of trading for something you thought was better, cooler or more your personality style was the norm in a large family.

Yeah, I had friends that traded baseball cards, football cards, hockey cards, sports equipement, games or whatever...none of them are traders today except for me (retail trader) but I grew up in a family with several professional traders as relatives that worked for the exchange or a financial institution firm.

Back to those that traded card, comic books or whatever when I was a kid...one of them sold his collection for 100k when he recently turned 50 years old. That's a huge profit considering when he started trading cards, comic books and such...he probably only put about 2k into it as a kid.

What does he do for a living ? Officer in the Air Force...something with logistics. He graduated from the Air Force academy...played hockey for them. Team wasn't very good when he was there. Yet, I do remember him still trading cards, comic books and such even when he was at the academy because he would attend conventions for card dealers and comic book dealers.

wrbtrader
 
Even if you have some natural talent as a kid, you're most likely going to be institutionalized first. There goes most people's ability to think for themselves. It wasn't until I started to study inferential thinking that I had any chance at all. Anomalies rule! Haha.
 
If you're trying to explain what the markets are doing right now and at the end the receiving party asks you "why?", then It's just not going to work. But that's what you learn in school. Endless explanation attempting to establish causality.
 
eves_banished_children said:
But when I was very young I knew a natural trader, and his specialty in the beginning was trading cards i.e. baseball cards, star wars cards, trading cards for television shows, from cereal boxes, he was just a natural at it. He'd spend a good portion of his after school time riding around on his bicycle engaging the other kids in this kind of trading and had a huge collection of cards.
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what you described is completely foreign to the idea of market trading

you described the skill of dealing with people which is great in any business except trading

in trading you have to deal with yourself - completely opposite skill to dealing with people... in fact trader really has nothing to do with people at all
 
eves_banished_children said:
I'm curious how many people consider themselves sort of born to trading.

What I mean by that is that I'm not, for me it is kind of forced, I'm not a natural.

But when I was very young I knew a natural trader, and his specialty in the beginning was trading cards i.e. baseball cards, star wars cards, trading cards for television shows, from cereal boxes, he was just a natural at it. He'd spend a good portion of his after school time riding around on his bicycle engaging the other kids in this kind of trading and had a huge collection of cards.

Later I knew this same person to trade the kind of patches that scouts would sew on to the arms of their uniforms.

When you were young, were you like that ?

Random question just because I'm curious.
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I'm curious what he does now, though there are many ways to be enterpreneurial, and dealing with people is very different from electronic trading. However, people-trading is right up in the same alley, and foreign to most (unless you are sole owner of hotel chains, malls, etc. ;), OR used car dealer, clerk, ... it's a spectrum too. Mainly someone like that could be one building new businesses and will be doing lots of things simultaneously for diversification and opportunity-seeking.

I guess the trading most talked about on ET is about electronic trading though.

Agree about plastic fantastic. Got a biodegradable bank card and use a bank/insurance company that strive for sustainability. Rather choose such options than the cheapest.
 
Being a truly natural trader & sustaining it over the years is rare because trading an account upward over time goes against human nature.
Some traders have substantial gains right out of the gate, nearly all of them end up giving back most or all of it back & than some.

Some traders have substantial gains right out of the gate, nearly all of them end up giving back most or all of it. They may have thought they were naturals, they are garden variety 'shooting stars', destined for a big serving of humble pie. Blasting an acct into the 7 digits is one thing, keeping the profits & sustaining making further gains is significantly harder.

If their is such a thing as 'natural traders' than the hall of fame traders such as George Soro's, Paul Tudor Jones, or Jim Rodgers probably would not be attributing their success to working their tails off

Our scorecard for trading is our acct balance & the sweat equity we put into it, not how much more talented/gifted we think we are.

"I would rather be lucky than good".
 
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