Quote from gms:
I think Seykota reasons that daytrading/very short term trades are riskier exactly because of the reasons you give. There are more trades the shorter term trader takes, and there's a risk with every trade, so there's naturally overall more risk.
Also, short-term traders have to find the next trade every day/ every moment because they're not committed in longer term trends. More work!
Every penny of profit is more critical when you're in for a short term, as opposed to a much longer term, especially given that you can reach a BE point and have a reduced risk trade you can ride the rest of the however long the trend goes. Less pressure.
And while the argument for the effects of short term compounding sounds as if it would be a benefit, compounding does work both ways, for you and against you, and short term losses can compound and erode that much faster in short term trades. I guess that falls under "more risk" as well.
don't take this the wrong way, but you aren't making logical sense. more trades don't equal less risk/reward. it is more risk, but more reward. of course its more work, putting on more trades will always be more work, and with that comes either, as you so graciously put it, more gains or more losses.
its just a faster game. if you're good, its a faster way to grow $$$, if you're bad, well......
just as seykota says on his site, the market tends to work in fractals, each timeframe giving the same setups, just in different magnitudes.