What does it take to be a trader.
- Thread starter dickey7
- Start date
Don't you think you should be the one to answer these questions and not us?
that's probably the best answer I've ever been reading to this question. Much respect, Sir.
dickey7,
One thing I consistently tell my kid is "you don't know shit, you don't know nothing , so listen to your father so you don't make mistakes"
The same applies to you. You don't know shit about trading. This trading will eat the skin off your ass and the money out your pockets if you don't get quality answers to quality questions
Who are you going to listen to to become a consistent profitable trader is the first question you need to answer? My advice is to listen to someone who is making money trading. That's a thread you need to start or research for here on the ET website.
I understand. I guess maybe that is sort of what I’m asking, but it’s hard to decipher on ET with all the threads and noise. The search feature on ET isn’t that dynamic and when searching you mainly get the most recent articles with certain keywords, which is a lot to go through...
So maybe to be more concise, what is a real day trading return % for a year. So if I sock my capital in mutual funds, over the long run I should get ~8%. Maybe a good hedge fund may get 10-15%, what is a good run rate % for a day trader (ignoring leverage), 50%, 75%, 150%??? I understand some years will be better and worse than others.
Start a new thread and kindly ask "How did you become a consistently profitable XXX day trader"
"What do I need to do to become a consistently profitable XXX day trader"
XXX can mean stock, options, futures, etc.
You've got to want it. Everyone started somewhere. It's not about rate of return or capital - it's about drive. I don't think a ton of successful traders - started out as traders. Go look at any of the Market Wizards or Supertraders books and you see many began in another profession. It's about drive.
Patience. If you are trading manually (which I do, as well as systematically and working on algo trading), most of your time is spent waiting. There are so many opportunities out there. List your setups, scan and wait. Don't have a daily target or anything stupid like that. My experience when active trading is a few days and a few well placed trades can return you 50%+ for the year. For example last week I returned 16% on AMD, a few weeks before some insane amount like 80% on TSLA. In between I trolled ET and worked on my own trading software.