The reason why some people blow up their trading accounts.

Haha.. I thought you were talking to yourself @Golden Retriever Trading since I've got TEB ignored...

I haven't watched the entire video, but did watch a fair bit... the main reason people blow up there accounts is because they are ignorant and just gamble without risk management.

Also, you are right with the fact that a lot of 'traders' are over-confident, mainly because they do a backtest and think they hit the jackpot while the only thing they hit is a past data fit.
That 5% you mention in the vid, it's certainly doable but mainly because of leverage. You have 10k, leverage it so trade with 200k in futures and make 0.25% = 5% on your account balance.
The problem with that is eventually you run into issues with the strategy not being scalable to infinity. IE, when you hit 1mln, you will find it hard to run the same strategy because you would need to trade 100x initial size... and you hit bigger liquidity issues further up.

That's also one of the reasons multi-billion dollar hedgefund "only" aim for what... 20-30% yearly?

It does become quite a bit more difficult when you're forced to become a market maker
 
What pro traders make 100% in a few days? Sounds more like pro gamblers to me. I understand 20-30% in a few days with very high volatility but 100% and over means the position sizes are outrageous.

Cutting your losses quick is another silly idea sold to neophytes. What will happen is, the noise will force you to exit, then the main direction will resume and you feel like an idiot. Stops are very useful in many scenarios but they're not mandatory in every scenario nor do they have to be tight.
 
Didn't your man Soros make a billion dollars shorting the Pound Sterling? I don't know what the size of his account was 25 years go, but it was a big gain. A lot of people made astronomical money shorting subprime. Jesse Livermore doubled his account quite often. And the guy that was on that show Wall Street Warriors, Timothy Sykes I believe doubled his account every now and then shorting penny stocks.

If all of these accounts in fact fell short of the 100% return mark, then I guess it is an exaggeration, but perhaps junior/amateur traders could find wisdom in the overall message rather than cherry picking the semantics that may be a tad factually incorrect.

As far as cutting losses quickly - it is not a silly idea. You may have found a system that works in not cutting losses quickly, and if that is the case, more power to you, and whatever works, works. It doesn't matter what the "conventional" wisdom of trading says.. as long as you can profit, thats all that matters. However, from my research, it does seem to indicate that people trade more successfully when cutting their losses quickly. Although I do know of a number of traders who don't do that and succeed - and to them, that is more power to them.
 
Only problem I find with the OP's video is that you are compounding your profit each day/month and using that to increase your "position" for the next session. Real traders don't do that, if I had to take a wild stab at guessing common sense...

You are assuming that those next-day/month trades are making 5% of the previous days/month account total. So when one is at a billion, they are somehow going to make 50 million in a day? What on earth are you trading to make that in a day?
 
Didn't your man Soros make a billion dollars shorting the Pound Sterling? I don't know what the size of his account was 25 years go, but it was a big gain. A lot of people made astronomical money shorting subprime. Jesse Livermore doubled his account quite often. And the guy that was on that show Wall Street Warriors, Timothy Sykes I believe doubled his account every now and then shorting penny stocks.

If all of these accounts in fact fell short of the 100% return mark, then I guess it is an exaggeration, but perhaps junior/amateur traders could find wisdom in the overall message rather than cherry picking the semantics that may be a tad factually incorrect.

As far as cutting losses quickly - it is not a silly idea. You may have found a system that works in not cutting losses quickly, and if that is the case, more power to you, and whatever works, works. It doesn't matter what the "conventional" wisdom of trading says.. as long as you can profit, thats all that matters. However, from my research, it does seem to indicate that people trade more successfully when cutting their losses quickly. Although I do know of a number of traders who don't do that and succeed - and to them, that is more power to them.

This is very misleading example and another reason why people blow out their account. If George soros did it, I can do it too. I am not trying to be negative but not everyone can do what soros did and even himself cannot repeat it again, simply, the market system doesnot allow it anymore.
 
I wouldn't say the market system doesn't allow it. Currency pegs will be lifted in the future. Some stocks will go down 50% in a day and if you happened to have a few out of the money puts, you might be lucky to double. Yes this thinking does put people in the poor house but that is not the point of the video. It's semantics
 
Only problem I find with the OP's video is that you are compounding your profit each day/month and using that to increase your "position" for the next session. Real traders don't do that, if I had to take a wild stab at guessing common sense...

You are assuming that those next-day/month trades are making 5% of the previous days/month account total. So when one is at a billion, they are somehow going to make 50 million in a day? What on earth are you trading to make that in a day?

Why wouldn't you compound returns? I have always done this, otherwise what's the point? Trading a 25k account forever? you might as well get a day job.

Of course liquidity will set limits but you still do this as much as the liquidity allows.
 
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