Questions About Being A Trader

dbphoenix said:
click on members' names and view their profiles to find plenty of people who've been at this for four or five or eight or ten years and still haven't reached a point where they are making consistent profits
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lindq said:
It's very easy to blow 5-10 years sitting at a trading desk, chasing a dream and fooling yourself that you're getting somewhere. But the odds are great that you won't be getting anywhere, and you'll waste years that could have been spent on a more certain professional path.
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I think it's common. I'm more frequent on trade2win, but lots of people there have been at this for about 10 years and still clearly aren't profitable.
(I met someone called Vasso in a trading chatroom who told me he was yet to get consistently profitable, and he'd been at it 27 years!)
It must be the same on this site, too.
I'm still not 100% certain that it's actually possible!! (lots of fakers pretending to be profitable online and i've seen at least 2 of them exposed on trade2win).

However, as someone mentinoed before, you never know unless you try.
And when you consider how about 90% of the working population are depressed on Monday morning, and overjoyed on Friday afternoon 'home time', we're all wasting our lives in my mind!
If only I could have been a footballer or a porn star or something!!
 
Hooti said:
process of observe, back test, forward test, sim trade, live trade... if you skimp at any point the emotional capitol doesn't develop. You have to do the work yourself, all of it. Make it your own. Repeat every step for yourself and by yourself. ...determination and ambition. It isn't easy, that is for sure.
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Incorrect. The proper way to learn how to trade is to lose real money in the real market. Observing and paper trading etc are wastes of time.
 
Buy1Sell2 said:
Incorrect. The proper way to learn how to trade is to lose real money in the real market. Observing and paper trading etc are wastes of time.
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When I started I paid for classes, read books, hired a private coach. That was what they all said. "Start by trading (live) small and trading often" one of them said. And for a long time my personal experience was that comparing my own paper trading to live trading was like comparing apples and oranges.

But once I learned to take the money out of it... and trade correctly
And taking the money out of it was a complex process that didn't happen overnight...
Once I really did that, then it dawned on me without the money factor there isn't much difference between sim and live. It is all between your ears, and mark douglas talks about that. I finally understood him. It just took a few years! And trading without staying conscious of the money is a particular skill set.

To look at it in another way. If you were one of the successful ones and taking in lots of $ from those not so successful... wouldn't you put it out there for the beginners to keep paying tuition as they learn? Perhaps the successful collect the tuition. If you are not that cruel, you might at least not say much about it if you are profiting from it... liquidity in the market and all that. Mark Douglas has a 60+ min video where near the end he says that if your sim trading and live don't match... it's all between your ears and you can work on that.

Your choice.
 
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drcha said:
Both are necessary: paper trade, and lose real money.
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Paper trading and observing only serve a purpose for a day or two. Just to get the logistics down of what orders there are and how to place them. Any longer and you will develop negative habits. You must lose to win.
 
Buy1Sell2 said:
Bingo
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Amazing how you can hear the opposite of what someone says. It is the live aspect that causes virtually all to fail -- unless they get off on the right footing of trading correctly and not emotionally because of the money factor. The concept you have to pay tuition and lose... is just an idea. Follow it if you must.
 
Hooti said:
It is the live aspect that causes virtually all to fail --
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This is incorrect. Most will fail anyway. No amount of observing and papertrading will make a person a winner. Rather, they think they will be a winner due to their fake profits. The few that do win, will be successful by learning it live. It's quite simple.
 
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