Topsteptrader

[DR.BOUYE]

... to which I'll add, why is everyone who believes that even here? If trading is impossible and nobody can do it, why do the same people = different aliases continue to waste their time in trader message boards to begin with?

Furthermore, why does this website here still exist? Should Baron just shut the doors, delete ET from the servers and do everyone else a favor? If trading is impossible and everyone fails, why is anyone still here inside?

**

After reading a number of the recent "is trading..." threads with all the complete & total negativity, I wonder what drives said posters to repeat the same mantra over and over and over and over and over again. OK... trading ain't worth it or it's impossible in some minds. Fine. Now what are you going to do? Keep wasting your time here yammering the same repeated posts? If so, why?

Financial market speculation presents itself in such a way that fascinates the human mind, and our primordial instincts are put into overdrive. Can you crack the code?

The basic technical assembly of charts and other forms of information are always accompanied by the non tangible psychological caveats.

Do you have what it takes?

 

[helmholtz]

If you look at any of the great hedge fund manager and traders they ALL had a lucky break where they got into the market at the right time in history or had one or a series of huge lucky trades--- which provided the capital base to stay in the game for the next round of luck or to be able to find, discover , or hire real edge . Never underestimate the role of luck in business, trading, life for those that haven't an xploitable/scalable edge. HH

 

[helmholtz]

By the way, was there only one person from elite who was able to get funding by passing the combine? That's out of 100's who tried and failed??

 

[NoDoji]

By the way again, if 99% of their recruits failed, their choosing method was wrong for that job. Had they called in 100 random people from the street, they would have got a better result....

My guess is that placing large amounts of capital to work in the markets for consistent profits is nothing like day trading a few futures contracts or a few thousand shares of stock. The big players who are "killing it" day trading consistently are HFTs and they profit by way of complex algos capturing fractions of cents all day long ("...in 2013, certain high frequency traders reaped profits for 99% of their trading days." - article on HFT)

Comparing the methods used by profitable small retail day traders to those used by professional asset managers and institutional traders makes no sense. The big players derive their edges in ways that the small retail trader can't touch, from front-running large orders (HFTs) and other arbitrage tactics to gathering information on publicly traded companies that isn't available to most people to plain old insider trading.

I don't understand why Surf and so many others keep comparing the two camps. It would be like having 1000 pediatricians perform heart bypass surgery without any instruction and concluding from the results that 99.99% of pediatricians are failures.

Mark Douglas' experience in the professional trading arena (1982):

"The next major disappointment came when I began to meet and make friends with as many floor traders as possible, believing that if the guys up in the offices don't know how to make money, the floor traders certainly must. Again, I found the same conditions that existed up n the offices. Other than a handful of floor traders who had a reputation and a mystique that everyone seemed to be in awe of, I couldn't find one person who was making money consistently, who wasn't confused or knew what he wanted to do and then did it without first having to ask everyone around him for confirmation that he was doing the right thing. I am not implying that I didn't meet traders who at some point in the day hadn't made money. They just couldn't keep it."

 

[NoDoji]

By the way, was there only one person from elite who was able to get funding by passing the combine? That's out of 100's who tried and failed??

I thought there were only a few ET-ers who tried it. Who were the 100's of others?

 

[DR.BOUYE]

If you look at any of the great hedge fund manager and traders they ALL had a lucky break where they got into the market at the right time in history or had one or a series of huge lucky trades--- which provided the capital base to stay in the game for the next round of luck or to be able to find, discover , or hire real edge . Never underestimate the role of luck in business, trading, life for those that haven't an xploitable/scalable edge. HH

Dan Zanger, managed to defy all odds with a somewhat unnatural return, to the point in which even the role luck could hardly be permissible as a legitimate argument.

 

[helmholtz]

I thought there were only a few ET-ers who tried it. Who were the 100's of others?

I'm questioning. I really don't know how many but I'm guessing hundreds. This is based on how long topsteptrader advertised / advertising costs--numbers of sign ups in think he must have covered his marketing costs here at minimum or he wouldn't have advertised for so long. Maverick definitely knows more than me, ask him.

 

[helmholtz]

Dan Zanger, managed to defy all odds with a somewhat unnatural return, to the point in which even the role luck could hardly be permissible as a legitimate argument.

Absolutely-- but is he still making money? Zanger is the lottery winner, the survivor out of 1000's --- you know there HAS to be one.

Unless he had access to info that he never talked about. Remember, that's always a possibility. HH

 

[austinp]

Do you have what it takes?

According to all these similar threads, that is a stupid question. Nobody has what it takes. Nobody succeeds at trading. Everyone is a failure or a fraud or both.

That's it, end of story according to all the doomsayers. Now what?

 

[DR.BOUYE]

Absolutely-- but is he still making money? Zanger is the lottery winner, the survivor out of 1000's --- you know there HAS to be one.

Unless he had access to info that he never talked about. Remember, that's always a possibility. HH

There was also the possibility of an MBA from Harvard, but I guess that Zangers luck in life lay elsewhere.