Cut losses short â and you rack up a ton of small losses and huge commissions/spread costs that bleed your account. Eventually big wins come around to save you. Eventually.
Use wider stops â and when you lose you lose bigger. Therefore you need much bigger wins to break even.
Trade the trend â and you end up buying tons of false breakouts and you realize you never know wtf the trend is. Where was the trend in the Qs at 120 or when GOOG was near 500? Lots of small losses versus few huge wins, more for the investor type.
Fade the trend â lots of small wins versus some huge losses.
All in â you find yourself trying to pick tops and bottoms.
Average in â Average Up and you get shaken out often because you have a bigger position and you can't afford the position to go against you much, price mostly reacts back to your average price. Average Down, and most times you get out at smaller loss or bigger win, but sometimes you blow up your account.
Ride winners â and you see huge profits get wiped out.
Take profit â and you leave your retirement on the table.
Diversify â and all your positions are either too correlated with each other or so non-correlated that they cancel each other out.
Donât diversify â put all your eggs in one basket and your at the mercy of luck, worked for Bill Gates, Rockefeller and many others though.
Backtest - and you find yourself optimizing your strategy to fit past data.
Don't backtest - and you have no idea which strategies have actually worked in the past.
Abandon a strategy - right when it starts working again.
Don't abandon a strategy - and you blow up when it stops working.
This is why trading is a negative sum game and the players that do survive do so by being insitutional long term long only players, minimizing commissions/spread costs, minimizing the tax bill, and charging a ton of money in fees. I donât know how some of the guys in the Trader PL thread make money day in and day out, they make it look easy.
Use wider stops â and when you lose you lose bigger. Therefore you need much bigger wins to break even.
Trade the trend â and you end up buying tons of false breakouts and you realize you never know wtf the trend is. Where was the trend in the Qs at 120 or when GOOG was near 500? Lots of small losses versus few huge wins, more for the investor type.
Fade the trend â lots of small wins versus some huge losses.
All in â you find yourself trying to pick tops and bottoms.
Average in â Average Up and you get shaken out often because you have a bigger position and you can't afford the position to go against you much, price mostly reacts back to your average price. Average Down, and most times you get out at smaller loss or bigger win, but sometimes you blow up your account.
Ride winners â and you see huge profits get wiped out.
Take profit â and you leave your retirement on the table.
Diversify â and all your positions are either too correlated with each other or so non-correlated that they cancel each other out.
Donât diversify â put all your eggs in one basket and your at the mercy of luck, worked for Bill Gates, Rockefeller and many others though.
Backtest - and you find yourself optimizing your strategy to fit past data.
Don't backtest - and you have no idea which strategies have actually worked in the past.
Abandon a strategy - right when it starts working again.
Don't abandon a strategy - and you blow up when it stops working.
This is why trading is a negative sum game and the players that do survive do so by being insitutional long term long only players, minimizing commissions/spread costs, minimizing the tax bill, and charging a ton of money in fees. I donât know how some of the guys in the Trader PL thread make money day in and day out, they make it look easy.
