Trading is a serious business. Comparatively, it's a very harsh business than other types of business. But it's the most fair business there is. It all comes down to how well you yourself trade.
You lose because you yourself suck. You win because you yourself did the right thing. Still, even if you win or lose, it may not be a good or bad thing. You can make profits coincidentally with a trading mistake and lose even if you do the right thing. Still, it all comes down to what you are as trader.
Still, I've had some fun moments in this business. You get to meet all these ego-maniacs that come and go. They make you laugh with the lack of grasp in reality and also makes you better from learning from they're mistakes. If you haven't noticed, I'm reading this based on Aphie revelation of looking into lessening Anxiety and Stress while trading.
I'm not going to write about how Aphie was. I'm going to write about mistakes others have shown me which refreshed my discipline.
First guy I'd like to talk about is G. He was in the 1st prop. firm I was in. I went in as the first 4 trader trainee at the firm and he came in as the 2nd phase of traders the firm hired. He sat next to me and my boss(who I'll write about later) wanted me to teach him how to use the trading software. It was actually the Hammer which is used in the Andover Equity trading.(Great Platform, just in case you wanted to know)
Now I teach him what each keys were and taught him how to change charts (It was RealTick, general platform is good but as a system trader not so good...). Now it was time to teach him the analysis part.
The firm actually forcibly required you trade a combination of:
1. 7-17 Moving Average
2. 7 Bar Fast and Slow %K(no %D)
3. 17 bar Moving Average, 1.8 Std. Dev. Bollinger band.
4. Candlestick charts.
Now, right when I started he stopped me and told me he knew how to trade. He mentioned about doing a lot of studying and he didn't need any help with the analytics. He was looking at the 3 indicators and started yapping about how the indicators were well made and follows the market well.
He actually tried to teach me how to use these indicators. Funny thing is that I have backtested almost every combination of the indicator and 95% of it didn't work.
Well, he started trading under Hammer's Demo mode so that he can become compatible with the trading platform. I told him to start punching keys in without caring about the fake equity buying and shorting so that he can get a feel of reacting fast with keyboard. Still, he started trading based on his trading methodology.
Well, the opening rush had ended by then and I was just tape reading the slow lunch time market with 100 lots trades. I was actually ignoring the firm's indicator and trading purely the TOS and NASDAQ LvL 2. My trades weren't going well and I was red at the time.
Watching me going in and out of the trade and getting eaten by commission, he starts critisizing my trades. Well, that was actually fine because I was trying to getting the feel of trading discretionary. He goes on yapping and yapping. I would go down stairs to grab a Starbucks, then he would say, "Yeah, you should really take a break. You better take some time and center yourself." (LOL.... why do you think I'm trading 100 lots? Well, I was in the red so he was right in a way... LOL)
Well, lucky for him, with a demo $50,000 account($1 million margin) he had 10000+ shares of some stock and was green a few thousand dollars open position(not much compared to the amount of shares open). He just sat at the desk sitting back, looking at how everyone was trading. He had this satisfying face with a little smirking. He was talking about how I had to know the market to trade and once you get it, it's easy... (I'm still not sure what he still meant by that... I'm not a genius like him).
Soon, the market pace had picked up. The volitility had started to increase and I started trading regular share amount. After taking a few trades my equity had gone back to green(after commissions of course). I look next to me and his face was just pale. The market has gone against him and he had a large open position loss. By that time, I was tired of him so I said something sarcastic about the market going the way he suspects it to be.
He actually liquidated the position and restarted the demo from a fresh new start.(It's just like a kid playing a video game... LOL) Well, I went through another wave of trades in another opportunity. He was talking to me while trading and started telling me that the P/E ratio is blah blah blah and that the market has to go his way. Some other guy listening to that asked him, what if it doesn't? and his answer was, "It's not going to happen and even if it does, there's something wrong with the market."
Well, the trend was showing up but his P/E ratio thing?? was showing down. He kept on adding positions but eventually, the market closed and liquidated the loss.
He had a major ego issue. Even with two busted demo accounts, he still kept saying the market was wrong. Personally, I don't feel sorry for the guy. It was actually funny looking at, how much the market was against him, he kept his ego and went against it.
By the next day, he came to our office differently. He was more humble and started to observe and listen to others more.
But few weeks later, once he got the hang of it in the demo. He got the ego back. When he went live from demo, he eventually lost the account and got fired.
The last part actually wasn't so funny but the demo trading he did was....