Quote from Occam:
Unfortunately, most individuals who put in 000's of hours to "learn trading" will probably have nothing to show for it. Case in point: most former floor traders are now finished, unable to make it in the electronic markets -- and these are people with access to capital, not to mention related experience. (Seeing the movie "Floored" should be required viewing for anyone with an interest in the trading field.)
Unless you're profitable and/or have new ideas of your own and can see a clear path to a definitive edge, you're probably wasting your time and would be better served entering another line of work.
Trading is not getting any easier. Just look at the number of people who were once active here in this thread, and have now dropped off the face of the earth. Even several recently "hot" HFT's are now shrinking and/or laying off workers. Market efficiency is monotonically increasing, over the long run, which on average makes profitable trading that much harder, even as it makes long-term investing "cheaper".
Your post is interesting.
I noticed two times in my amateur career when things changed:
1. The copier and
2. the PC.
In a smaller way one of the dailies did put a 200MA on their volume chart.
At first, in 1957, I had to pencil my charts. I used a brownline of a master blank chart. In this way I could hand out dailies of tradables.(blueprints)
Then it was 10% of capital every 6 to 8 days. Seven turns doubled capital.
Later the Pc and its printer attachment made it possible to have typed printouts of daily data. So I did add delete type Universes. I had a 4'x8' wall hanging that I put 33 printouts on according to their purposes. I punched my mail from the broker and put it in reverse chron in 3 ring binders.
PC's, at some point started to use real time data and I used 36 inch paraboloc antennas to receive it and flip intraday charts that had 8 data points a day for about 30 instruments at any given time.
It was still 10% of capital every 6 to 8 days.
Floppy disks changed things.
I went over to futures on big contracts (the only kind then). I charted @ 30 min data points on two charts each offset by fifteen minutes. So the turns were just projected ahead of time and I called them in. there were ten items to narrate and repeat, so it was much faster than old time "tape reading". And I was being called too since by then the floor traders coattailed me.
A lot of people here in ET are just modern opportunists that have no referential basis for making money. They hope, bet and confirm (see spurt)
I missed the monotonically increasing efficiency thing you mention.
Time compresssed by a factor of two in the last 20 years. AND, fortuately the "taking" stayed the same.
So 7 turns @ 10% to double is now 33% a day and doubling every 3 to 4 days. This means trading is only a part time thing these days.
In September I'll go to Hawaii and Denver in a triangle.
I never got into the "edge" thing; trading is just about taking the full offer of the market. The market only works in one manner.
