...expansion would be "If everyone were using profitable strategies then everyone would be profitable" which of course is nonsense. ...
This kind of reasoning, evaluating a function at it's boundary conditions, is critical in problem solving. It nicely gives a simple proof of why everyone cannot be using a (the same) "winning" strategy.
When I went to Bright to get training, these thoughts came to me over and over - how many people can profitably "fit" into these strategies that are being taught, without it hurting the strategy itself? To make it worse, I had gone to Bright's training classes by seperating them out over a two year period. Both classes were jamed, so I knew that these "strategies/tactics" had been and would have been getting out like gossip in Washington DC. To make it "worse," I had also known that Echo traders were ex-Bright traders, had essentially copied a successful business model, and implemented it themselves, including the training! So I was off by a factor of two the number of traders learning these strategies.
Yet I reasoned, well, this has gotten out to hundreds if not thousands of traders, yet "where are the customers yatchs ?" Then it hit me _TRADING_CANNOT_BE_TAUGHT_, only strategies can be taught - these are not the same thing!
As the second course went on, I started to hear things that I had not heard about in the first one, and how the market had changed and a "refactoring" or in some case "scraping of" some the strategies that had been expoused a couple of years earlier. In the middle of the week, on Wednesday, they were having an advanced course available only to Bright traders. I tried to sneak in, but was caught by Bob (lol). I learned the title of the talk tho - that was enough for me - when I got home, I would spend every waking moment thinking about how a strategy that had been taught at the "introductory" class could be modified and why it would have to be modified, etc...
At this time, I understood that there was a "conflict of interests" between the traders that had gotten access to these strategies, and first rate prop firms that needed successful traders to keep its cash cow going - Bright's and Echo's would love to have _EVERY_ trader be wildly successful, as they would rake in the commissions like it was falling from the sky, but other traders, once having learned them, wouldn't want them to "get out." (funny how I wanted the Brights to stop teaching these strategies once _I_ had learned of them - selfish bastard that I am
)
Because I had been to two Bright sessions, I realized then that if I were going to have longevity as a trader, I would need to differentiate myself from every other trader that had gotten access to the strategies, and to monitor the ones that I was using "blindly" closely for signs that they had been "arbed out."
I realize now that trading is less "strategy" and more of an evolving process. The real gift that the Brights taught me was _HOW_ to think about the markets, how they are put together stich by stich. Knowing this, I set out to modify the strategies that were taught to suit my own style, and to keep a daily regimen of understanding how any new rule, or new offering, etc., would give me an edge, and how this change would affect the structural basis of the markets. I would have to keep, at least in step with the markets, and as I got better at it, one step ahead.
My anxiety dissolved once I had this newfound point of view...
nitro
