Quote from midlifeguy:
- There's a social stigma to day trading.
- There's no risk manager when you trade you're own funds. Hence there no one around that forcibly keeps risk tightly bounded - which prevents you from ever losing more than you can easily recover.
- There's no one to help you out when you're in a slump.
- There's no one around that will ensure that there is no deviation from the predefined strategy or system.
- There's no institutional resources at home as far as research, bloomberg terminals, programmers, etc.
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You assume that what you say above is why people dont trade on their own and I respectfully disagree.
1. I find no stigma to day trading, I am actually proud to answer people who ask me what I do, especially those who knew what I use to do. I busted my butt to get to this point and there is no stigma in my opinion. If other people who are unskilled or unable to put the work in apply a stigma, that is there own hangup.
2. Yeah I have no risk manager except myself but why do we all need big brother if we can handle it? The key to trading is risk management and if you cannot do it yourself then an artificial oversight is not going to really teach you since it is forced. I do not need any risk manager hanging over my shoulder. If one has no self discipline for risk management then they should not be trading.
3. There is no one to help you out in a slump true, but if I am in a bad slump in an IB, I most likely get fired since I am costing them money. Slumps happen to everyone and only you are truly responsible for it.
4. No one around t keep me on strategy.... Again a trader needs true discipline not artificial control. If you can handel the discipline you can do it, if not you work under someone else.
5. I dont have institutional tools like Bloomberg but I do not need it. Penty of tools available to retail and even 100% payout props unless you are trading complex deriviatives or structured products.
Trading takes discipline skill and determination and either you have it or you do not. It took me years to get here and I either had to develop risk management or measures to deal with slumps on my own or I was not going to make it on my own or anywhere else.
I think the key is to match your personality and skills with your trading style. Most people start out overtrading and blow out and never understand why. I started out trading all wrong when I first got into options and it took some time to learn the right way and THEN to learn how to respect risk. I am still not perfect or a market wizard but that is why I love it, the strive to always improve myself. Why do you think athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan always paracticed hard? Cause you can never stop trying to get better.