What makes Successful Traders?

[Handle123]

I disagree, a lot of trading has to do with intuition esp daytrading. If you trade without it your better off buying lottery tickets.

95% of my intuition loses money, I have just automation running while I design other systems. I have over 20 years of journals that prove to me I am not a seat of the pants trader. I am totally rule based trader which in itself forces me to have discipline, at some point you throw up your hands and say "screw it" and take all the signals, too tiring to think and proven thinking can't remember as well where probabilities give better responses based on past. I simple don't know of anyone who been trading over ten years that don't have rule based systems.

Of course intuition could be someone who has good memory and did much back testing to base decisions.

 

[RRY16]

I disagree, a lot of trading has to do with intuition esp daytrading. If you trade without it your better off buying lottery tickets.

Takes years to harness intuition otherwise....it's into wishing- Ed Seykota

 

[GotherL]

Prove it

If you can prove it it wouldn't be called instinct.

 

[mlawson71]

I disagree, a lot of trading has to do with intuition esp daytrading. If you trade without it your better off buying lottery tickets.

I rely on technical analysis, not intuition. Trading by intuition has never been particularly successful for me.

 

[birzos]

Being really smart or really stupid.

 

[GotherL]

95% of my intuition loses money

I don't know how you got that figure but if that was true for you then you must really hate your gut.

Seems like I could be wrong thou. Automation systems without any intuition may still be successful. Haven't tried it yet myself so I wouldn't know.

 

[Handle123]

I don't know how you got that figure but if that was true for you then you must really hate your gut.

Seems like I could be wrong thou. Automation systems without any intuition may still be successful. Haven't tried it yet myself so I wouldn't know.

I have kept a journal of trades I felt like taking and put them down and the outcome. Actually, I learned much from doing it as I learned that when I have a certain thoughts, chances are good that extreme is upon the trade. Automation is great, leaves much more time to do other things instead of being in front of the screen.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Guys, I'm looking at your posts and I realize that for every person success is achieved in a variety of ways. And the most interesting is that it is unique in its way.

In broad terms, there are fewer ways to lose money than there are to make it. The problem is that human nature tends to gravitate to the former.

It also doesn't help that human nature tends to underestimate randomness. Chance plays a more meaningful role than we tend to give it credit for.

 

[vanzandt]

95% of my intuition loses money, I have just automation running while I design other systems. I have over 20 years of journals that prove to me I am not a seat of the pants trader. I am totally rule based trader which in itself forces me to have discipline, at some point you throw up your hands and say "screw it" and take all the signals, too tiring to think and proven thinking can't remember as well where probabilities give better responses based on past. I simple don't know of anyone who been trading over ten years that don't have rule based systems.

Of course intuition could be someone who has good memory and did much back testing to base decisions.

I don't know Handle, programed buy signals for me, and also sell signals, have in the past consistently lost money. In a big way. I quit that game. Intuition has paid off quite handsomely.

There is a difference between a "trader" and a "stock-picker". I'm definitely the latter. Intuition predicts the herd, both generally(markets) and specifically(stocks).

The more algorithmic traders out there the better. When you have age 20 something MIT mathematicians thinking they can beat the market via programing alone.... pfff, the market is going to gobble them up and spit em out. They make a few pennies a trade, but when Mother Market moves, they'll lose it all and then some. jmho

 

[Handle123]

I don't know Handle, programed buy signals for me, and also sell signals, have in the past consistently lost money. In a big way. I quit that game. Intuition has paid off quite handsomely.

There is a difference between a "trader" and a "stock-picker". I'm definitely the latter. Intuition predicts the herd, both generally(markets) and specifically(stocks).

The more algorithmic traders out there the better. When you have age 20 something MIT mathematicians thinking they can beat the market via programing alone.... pfff, the market is going to gobble them up and spit em out. They make a few pennies a trade, but when Mother Market moves, they'll lose it all and then some. jmho

Well, I didn't go to MIT nor take much Math in college, nor computer science. I did hand charts for near 25 years even though had roomful of computers. I know how to read charts well, so no lack of charting in the programming, and yet I use probabilities of what worked in past to foretell the future. We all do, even you, if you didn't remember what worked before, you would not be able to know what to do.

Maybe your Trading Plan was not complete enough to be programmed? It is difficult to include charting within program to disallow signals based on chart patterns. Today I traded manually, not cause the automation wasn't working but I don't want to lose knowledge, I also made a new signal over the weekend and wanted to trade it. I don't pick stocks, they pick me by making right patterns. I prefer to think on the weekends and be a robot during weekdays, I simply don't like trading all that much and automation allows me to do other things with my life and still rob the weak and whatever the strong will give me.