The odds of day trading yourself to a profit are lower than you expect"

[Simples]

Yes, that's one of the most thrilling things to realize is people are not willing to study or develop any type of plan when investing or trading. There are so many arrogant individuals who say "I am too busy to research or figure out where to put my retirement and long-term savings, I leave it to my broker" and other individuals who watch Mad Money thinking Jim Crammer their Hero or Money making Messiah! Most people will say crap like "I don't have the amount of time you have to micromanage my account" or when the Market is about to collapse they say during a 20 or 30% meltdown "I am a investor" even if their holdings have stocks showing signs of BK their going to show off they do not "micromanage their holdings' like we do!

Hint: They didn't come up with those ideas by themselves.

Groupthink is powerful, and most of us has been under its spell one time or another.

However, if most people were to start managing their accounts, they would probably lose more than simple buy & hold! The majority just cannot win above average anyways.

 

[lovethetrade]

I think traders in the top 20% would be making between $500-$1,000 per day on average but this would be largely influenced by account size.

This was a bit on the conservative side.

I think traders in the top 10% with a $50K account would be making $1-2K per day on average.

Traders in the top 10-20% would be earning $500-1K per day on average.

 

[eganon69]

I don't know about you guys but I would say that my higher education strongly influenced the way I trade and develop a system. Where I was educated we were encouraged to THINK logically about what was happening and there was emphasis on having a hypothesis and testing it and then evaluating it objectively. Then form another and so forth. That's of course a science based background but that's how I approached my trading. I read how you are "supposed" to do it in several books and learned a little from each one. Sometimes by testing out things you find out some people are fUllman of shit in what they teach....we have all had teacher like that. But I still learned from that person and experience....sometimes you just learn what NOT to do which is almost if not more important than what to do.

Doctors are the same way...say 100 all got the same education at the same school and may have graduated with 100 other doctors on the same day. But those 100 doctors all approach Medicine differently. Some successfully some not so much. But I would rather them have that educational base to make informed decisions. Experience hones that knowledge. To say they will practice with no education and learn it all by examining patients is ludicrous.

 

[Cswim63]

My mentor's doctor, the one who inspired him to do the kind of work he did, went to Harvard Medical school but did not attend class. He was a master diagnostician, and on at least one occasion a limo was sent for him to come back to Boston. The other doctors could not figure out what was wrong with the patient. He walked into the room, looked at the patient, and walked out. The other doctors asked him what it was. He replied tersely, "Haven't you ever smelled Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever?

 

[eganon69]

Lol. A doctor I know walked into a room and smelled Chlamydia from the doorway. He said he ordered the junior doctor to get a culture and never even examined the patient. But I don't know if I want that talent.

 

[Cswim63]

Carney never had office hours either. If you got sick, you showed up at his house, day or night. He said that "People don't get sick by appointment."

 

[Cswim63]

Knowledge is good, except that it usually keeps you from learning how the stuff you know is inaccurate.

 

[eganon69]

Agreed but I am just pointing out that education is better than none in my opinion even if it does not tell the entire story. There is an art to most fields as in trading but I suspect those that made it alone just by watching charts are few and far between. Even those that think books are not helpful had to read them to glean that knowledge and opinion. In the end they may only keep a fraction of what they learn...but they still have a base of education on which to start their systems.

 

[Cswim63]

Yeah most of what I learned is they really don't have a clue what they are talking about. Theres just too many contradictions and inconsistencies on their way to the truth. The only salvation I found was first in philosophy, where at least the aforementioned idea was part of some of their thinking. Later I found it in the study of anomaly and change. Again, inconsistency was acknowledged as part of the deal. Finally I found it in spirituality, in the idea that I am not God, and often cannot explain why things happen and for what reason.

 

[Cswim63]

The mystics have been saying for thousands of years that the essential stuff of the universe is nonstuff. Energy and information, if you will. We have only recently begun to "discover" this idea in science.