Percentage of Successful Trader

many professional poker players would also say their poker playing is not "gambling:

we thus devolve into a semantical wank

i think it reasonable to say if you are playing a game with a house edge e.g. roulette or blackjack (blackjack has a house edge if u do NOT count cards), then you are gambling

you may win, but regardless of your intent, you are playing a losing game - in the long run - by the laws of statistics.

a good poker player (until it was outlawed, i was a consistently winning poker player) is thus not "gambling" in the laymen's sense in that they have an edge over inferior players, so as long as they play inferior players , they win

but again, it's semantical.

assuming you are more skilled than your competitors, in the long run, poker is a winning game

also, in the long run, how much u win or lose is not dependant on luck, but on skill, especially if you're bets are small compared to your bankroll.

(sufficient capitalization to let your edge play out)
 
false

"Trading stocks with a time frame of hours to days... is a Zero Sum Game."

it SEEMS so, and for many practical purposes, it is CLOSE to so.

but it is not

for it to be a zero sum game, there must be EXACTLY a net of zero

if the net is off by even .01 , it is not zero sum

stock trading, is not zero sum

it cannot be, as long as there CAN be net winners or losers.

period
 
When you are playing poker professionally it would depend on many variables to make a statement that is is not gambling.

the participants.
the cards
the cut
bluffing abilities
discovering nuances and patterns of the other players.

etc..it goes on and on...


In trading it does not have to be risk on an uncertain outcome, if time is on your side. It can become more of 'not gambling" with time. Where poker is not progressive and each time its all on red or black and its purley luck on the outcome...

ok blackjack excluded.


Michael B.
 
electricsavant, you are correct, but in many ways the same can be said about trading

in poker, the CARDS on any given hand are random

but given sufficient N, the higher EV plays win more money - period

the same is true in trading.

i know the expected value, the win percentage, etc. of ALL my setups.

on any GIVEN trade entry with setup X, the result is essentially just as random as the poker card dealt on the river (given the remaining cards in the deck).

for example I have one setup that wins 75% of the time, with an average win of 7 points. but i have to risk 10 points to get that AVERAGE 7 point win.

for all intents and purposes, what happens after i enter THIS trade on THIS occasion is random, in that i can only know the probability of positive outcome, and I have no control over what happens once i enter the trade.

iow, this is the exact same scenario as poker

in poker i can have a 95% chance of winning in this situation, but whether or not i win or lose THIS iteration of that probability is completely out of my control, and random (within the probabilities mentioned)

the exact same thing is true in trading

i think the primary difference in trading is that you do not have the variability of opponents. in poker you never know how donkish the players you are playing are, and you can only calculate EV *if* you know their hands.
 
whitster..lets agree to disagree...though you do make all of the compelling points that have already been discussed ad nauseam' here.

I apologize for getting off topic of the intended direction of this thread by our thread author bladouc. I should be more sensitive to that.

i just wanted guests to realize and to be on guard for subliminal suggestions of opinions...yes opinions...whether intended or not.

As I believe Trading can be "not Gambling"..and I concede to that being an opinion but I always have phrased it carefully...
Quote from whitster:

electricsavant, you are correct, but in many ways the same can be said about trading

in poker, the CARDS on any given hand are random

but given sufficient N, the higher EV plays win more money - period

the same is true in trading.

i know the expected value, the win percentage, etc. of ALL my setups.

on any GIVEN trade entry with setup X, the result is essentially just as random as the poker card dealt on the river (given the remaining cards in the deck).

for example I have one setup that wins 75% of the time, with an average win of 7 points. but i have to risk 10 points to get that AVERAGE 7 point win.

for all intents and purposes, what happens after i enter THIS trade on THIS occasion is random, in that i can only know the probability of positive outcome, and I have no control over what happens once i enter the trade.

iow, this is the exact same scenario as poker

in poker i can have a 95% chance of winning in this situation, but whether or not i win or lose THIS iteration of that probability is completely out of my control, and random (within the probabilities mentioned)

the exact same thing is true in trading

i think the primary difference in trading is that you do not have the variability of opponents. in poker you never know how donkish the players you are playing are, and you can only calculate EV *if* you know their hands.
More...
 
trading or poker can be "gambling" or "not gambling"

if i make random entries in trading, or random plays in poker, either is gambling.

but again, this is a semantical wank, and just as prone to politics and how people WANT the world to be, and what they WANT words to mean (so as to properly categorize the world as they see it) as anything esle
 
Whitster, ES, my friends

It would seem that you guys violently agree (over one of those big questions where the meanings are seldom well defined or the same for both sides of the argument).


IMHO it can be summarised as "trading and poker can be gambling (as in a game of risk for pleasure)" and "trading and poker can be an arena for disciplined, skilled parties to extract money from poorer game participants."

And also, its very important to know the difference and recognize if one bleeds into the other.
 
as a corollary, no matter HOW you play it, roulette is gambling. because it is negative EV< and thus there is no edge. you can only hope for luck
 
well this is where whitster is wrong..

properly played blackjack with an accurate ranking of the plus/minus count applied to betsize ...places time on your side thus making it "not gambling" :) but you could play the slot machine for any amount of unknown time and lose it all....

but to be fair he did say poker...and he has the roulette thing covered.

Give me a 3 deck table with no cut and no limit and let me play it out with 6 players and I will win some money...maybe not the most...and I am not bragging...after all I am playing against the house. (apply this to some unit size Forex dealers that I know of and viola you got the same) BUT NOT WITH POKER

Now can we stay ontopic folks...?
 
"properly played blackjack with an accurate ranking of the plus/minus count applied to betsize ...places time on your side thus making it "not gambling" "

i never disagreed with that. in fact, i agreed with it


i said blackjack WITHOUT CARD COUNTING (read my post) is gambling, and the house has an edge. WiTH cardcounting, I have an edge

i have a PhD in mathematics aunt, who is banned from casinos for exactly this reason.

also, the MIT blackjack team is another famous example.
 
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