Trading vs Playing poker, will it help with my trading?
- Thread starter magix3d
- Start date
On a "relative" basis I would say its about the same ratio but it would be a very interesting paper for sure.
Of course the real problem with trading is validating successful where as poker players incomes and success are easily obtained on the web readily.
I too have done both LOTS of poker and LOTS of trading over the years, and I couldn't agree more.
I see trading being more like counting cards in BlackJack.
This is also true.
Back in the day I use to be quite the card counter.
my 2c: if you are a successful poker pro (that is you paid your bills
and grew your bankroll for many years without other sources of income) then you understand risk management and
have the tough psychological makeup necessary to come back
from drawdowns. Both will help you when trading.
However, I believe trading is much harder. Imagine that every time
you play, the Phill Ivey's of trading are at your table, not only that,
but some players can see your cards, and also know what the flop
turn and river will be, and on top of it pocket the rake.
and grew your bankroll for many years without other sources of income) then you understand risk management and
have the tough psychological makeup necessary to come back
from drawdowns. Both will help you when trading.
However, I believe trading is much harder. Imagine that every time
you play, the Phill Ivey's of trading are at your table, not only that,
but some players can see your cards, and also know what the flop
turn and river will be, and on top of it pocket the rake.
LOL
You have some very wrong pre-suppositions about trading.
Markets are nothing more then Live Auctions, they exits to facilitate orders.
Most of the time they are totally random and chaotic but once a trader learns how to READ them for what they truly are he can develop strategies to exploit the current environment.
It's no different then learning how to exploit a specific villain.
Learn to read the various market environments the same way you learn to read the various villains and your printing money.
That's why I have been so successful in teaching my group.
I absolutely agree with your comment regarding the benefits of "Learning to read the various environments", aka (charts) but the rest of your comments are better directed toward the FOREX markets which are the most corrupt traded markets on the globe.
There is a reason the banks have never agreed to openly share all of their perspective data streams with GLOBEX and it has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with transparency.
When you trade stocks, commodities, futures or options you are seeing all of the transactions for each instrument you are trading so you are able to make better decisions as to trade direction and chart directional strength.
With FOREX it is truly a crap shoot because to begin with you are only looking a portion of the trading going on when you trade a particular currency pair because there are over 8 separate and unique primary bank feeds. This doesn't even take into consideration the cross trading that takes place when one bank doesn't want particular transactions to show up on their own feed. You have the "villain", chaos and randomness spot on for the FOREX markets but not so for the others.
Sure, what I said is a naive two sentence parallel between poker and trading, but not that far fetched.
Regarding the Phill Ivey's of trading sitting at your table:
When you trade, you dont know who's on the other side of your trade.
It could be Goldman's market making algo, Steve Cohen building up a position or grandma cashing in her 401k.
Regarding players seeing your cards:
When you use a smart router, the internalizing B/D that has a first look there, can take the other side of your trade, step aside or lean on your order (politically correct speak for frontrunning)
based on their assesment of how much of an informed trader you are (not hard to do if they saw your trades in the past).
Regarding players knowing the flop turn and river:
If you need to fill a gazillion shares for some big fund, you know the most probable path the price will take, if you're a big fund honcho getting a heads up from the analyst, you know he will likely change the ratings, if you partied with a bunch of Washington big wigs over the weekend, you know the chances that some critical piece of legislation will pass, if you had lunch with the CFO you know the chances that the company will meet the numbers and so on.
In poker, as long as you make fewer mistakes than the other players you regularly play with, you should be ok in the long run.
In trading, that only applies to a small subset of traders (market makers, specialists all sorts of liquidity providers) that are in the fortunate position to pocket the vig.
For the rest of us, the speculators, the game is way harder.
All I'm saying is that you need to know your place in the foodchain. Perhaps your algo is able to sniff out supply and demand and tell you wich way the price is going, perhaps your insights into various events is better than the consensus and you can profitably position your portfolio.
Just make sure you're not on the bottom of the food chain
where life is brutal and short.
my advice: try another game. maybe play street fighter 2. even i, a non-pro at poker can realistically beat a pro like johnny chan at a couple hands of poker... but, i would have almost no chance against a pro of other games that involve different strategy than playing with 52 cards... yes, even street fighter 2. the markets move fast... it's much more complex than sitting and waiting for a pocket pair. maybe poker is just not your game.