sounds like the E*Trade baby!
Thinking of getting back into the game
- Thread starter mksummny
- Start date
sounds like the E*Trade baby!
Nothing significant has changed in the last year other than perhaps new regs. We are waiting to see what their effect will be if any. The trend to automation continues and dominates, but that was also true in Sep 2001. You are only 35. When did you start trading? if most of your trading was post 2008 you might be deluding yourself into thinking you're a good trader when you are only a lucky trader. You have to have traded profitably both before and through the 2000, 2008 and the flash crashes to call yourself a successful day trader in my opinion. Not saying you didn't do that, just saying it takes more than a few good years to really fall into the rare category of successful trader, unless you traded successfully for a few very good years and knew when to quit while well ahead, then never returned -- that's also being a successful trader. Nearly all gamblers give back their earnings if they stick with it long enough, ala' Jesse Livermore. The folks that do best in this racket, and it is most definitely a racket, are the TBTF or Too well-connected-to-fail market makers.
For the buy-and-hold broad market investor, the market has done absolutely nothing from 2000 through 2012 but lose to inflation. At best, they might have kept up with inflation via dividends. If you were a trader throughout that period and you did much better than beat inflation, then you might call yourself a successful trader depending on the result of dividing hours spent trading into net gains in constant dollars.
Sometimes lucky is just fine. Best of luck to you in any case.
I bet he had a typo and meant 2001. Otherwise, the post makes no sense.
Quote from QuANTum Way:
When I was ten I read in one newspaper that fifty percent of all marriages end up in the divorce. I was surprised with such a high percentage. If people love each other why would they ever want to split. I have grown up and I am still amazed with this statistics. Just the opposite though â why such a low percentage of marriages end up in the divorces? I mean , there are so few ideal couples. I know, I know â kids, bills, mortgages, habits, etc.
Trading is like a marriage. You fall in love with trading right away, you have such an enthusiasm at the beginning and then you either survive and enjoy the benefits or fail miserably. Statistics, however is a lot worse for traders than for newly weds. They fail ninety percent of the time. And according to my personal experience, the number is lowered⦠Trading is a lot more demanding than your wife or husband. Any mistake can be your last. You can find in any trading book what it takes to be a good trader. Just try to implement it in real life. Easier said than done. I read, for example, dozens of books and articles about trading. Did it help? Short term yes, long term no. The older you get the more stubborn and skeptical you become, the harder you accept new things. No solution? I hated to admit it but it looked like I was done as a trader. Finish, caput, done. Sixteen years and this is it? Thankfully, it was not meant to be. I met a guy who changed my life and my trading once and forever. He is only 25 but he is a freaking genius. He did not have a clue about trading but he knew how to write computer programs and create trading robots. The program that he showed left me speechless. I had no idea it was all possible. To be perfectly honest, he found me as his amazing program could do everything but make money. I needed to teach the machine how to make money. And I did .Since then , I have not entered a single trade with my hands.And I am pretty happy about it
What's wrong with this picture?
- Russian trader for 16 years (imagine phone bills pre 2000)
- trading is like a marriage
- meets random programmer who codes world class algos
- calls algos "robots"
- algos not augmented by manual intervention
I call 100% bullshit.
I appreciate your sceptical comments Dee . You have no idea how funny your comments sound to me as I am the only one that know what it took from me to get where I am .
I do not care whether you believe me or not and it is irrelevant .
I was 21 when I immigrated from Russia to USA . I got a job as a computer programmer but it was not meant to be as it was really boring . Once I saw an add in a newspaper about SOES bandits and Harvey Houtkin . I had some knowledge about equity market from my fellow programmer from India and the ad looked interesting. And that is how it all started for me . I became one of the original Soes Bandits . You right . After some expensive education (about 5K) I placed my first trades vocally to brokers who we shared the room with. As funny as it sounds it was the only way to trade for small investors.
Since then , I traded millions and millions of shares . Made and lost fortunes . Married a couple of times . BTW , i can not stand my current wife . She wants to change me and I do not want to change . But I am too busy with trading and I am not cutting my loss short for now (no divorce)
Regarding the programmer . My guy is not some random tech guy with the basic knowledge . He is more like a team leader for a group of seven talented people . They created a program that I found amazing. Their problem was that they could not come with any consistent patterns to make money . I am far from genius but i have a good memory and logical skills plus ton of experience on the markets . It took as quite some time but together with my guy we were able to come up with some algos
)) with high probability of making money . They are not world class by any means but they serve the purpose . Interference with the work of algos is the mistake that we made and it costed as dearly some time ago . You can beat the machine on a short distance , but long term you do not stand a chance. What you can do and it is recommmended is to try to improve your patterns from time to time . But no optimization as you gonna fool yourself.
And for all doubters . I love to meet new people , specially the ones who have their own opinions and they are not afraid to voice it. Talk to me .
I traded from Jan 1998 to Sept 2011. I quit, retired, whatever you want to call it at that point. I made a go at changing careers over the last year and for a multitude of reasons can no longer continue in that. So now I am sitting here with some money, time, and energy and wondering what is next for me. I am 35, four kids, great wife and have a pretty good brain. I am moving towards getting back in the market by trading opens and closes again and freeing up my day to work on my portfolio of rental properties that my wife and I have been adding to over the last 13 years.
I am not a dud and was quite successful at trading having pulled in 7 figures consecutively year after year. The only reason I asked in the beginning of this thread is because I know where the market was moving with automation and wanted a "feel" of where it was now. I have not looked in almost a year. I swore off stocks and options and decided I had enough, in a good way. Now I am looking at my future and wondering did I call it quits to early.
I was looking for opinions from some of the old school crowd who knew my style. Most of those guys look like they are trading intermittently now. I mentioned them earlier in a previous post.
I am not a dud and was quite successful at trading having pulled in 7 figures consecutively year after year. The only reason I asked in the beginning of this thread is because I know where the market was moving with automation and wanted a "feel" of where it was now. I have not looked in almost a year. I swore off stocks and options and decided I had enough, in a good way. Now I am looking at my future and wondering did I call it quits to early.
I was looking for opinions from some of the old school crowd who knew my style. Most of those guys look like they are trading intermittently now. I mentioned them earlier in a previous post.
Everyone you are talking about in the above post is all still trading actively and daily. The difference I think is gimmicks, tricks, and getting filled dont exist anymore. Being right is still right, but I do not know anyone who makes a living trading volume on low priced stocks any more. Im not sure it exists because of the mid spread and off exchange trades these days. Its not that things are going to automation, they are going to internalization and a massive destruction of volume.