What should a successful Trader's day/week look like?

[Peter8519]

What should a successful Trader's day/week look like? Looks can be very deceiving. If you ask how to be a successful trader then there will be plenty of advice how to become one. Which one to choose from ? It's a long and arduous journey. If it's that simple why bother getting a job. Everyone can be a trader.

 

[MrMuppet]

Also, I think that luck plays an important factor, too. If you started when DTB first went electronic and turned into EUREX, chances were rather high for you to make it.

10 years later it was a fking grind.

 

[HolyGrailSeeker]

A successful week should look like this..

 

[ctheo1]

This is a very subjective question and it will be different for everybody. It will be predicated on trading style/approach (day, swing etc) and lifestyle choices, including geographic location. You have to make your own choices. That's the whole essence of being "self-employed". It's beautiful but it can be a curse if you're not organized or like planning. Good luck.

 

[DevBru]

A successful traders week should end with a positive balance for the week, most of the time.

Everything in between will be different for each trader out there.

 

[murray t turtle]

I know each person's definition of success will be different but for this particular thread let's define it as the following: paying the bills with trading profits and/or consistent annual returns beating the market average.

Also I don't want this to be limited to only a certain time frame, comments about any duration trading from intraday to position traders etc...are all welcome.

I think it would be beneficial to see what the schedule demands are for successful traders. How much time per day/week.......
thanks everyone.

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Counting study time + public/private markets all the above + rule of 72. 6X12c =72 hours a week.Can be hard to beat qqq all the time.
/QLD helps some=good goal.
Invest nowhere near 72 hours a week screen time.
Cant get out of paying sales tax mostly since SCOTUS ruling;
but pay as little tax as possible.But pay plenty of ammo tax or sec fee when required/LOLLet profits ride + use some price targets.

 

[BlueWaterSailor]

It took the greater part of my young adult life to get where I am today. I was dead broke, worked shit jobs and took whatever I had left to the markets. I think about 3 years to break even and another two years until I made ok money.

I don't know if you intended it this way, but that's really encouraging. I've been trading for about 20 months now, and am more pumped about the results than I could possibly explain. I'm not boasting - my account, and thus my returns, are so small that you'd laugh your head off - but I've managed to support myself with nothing but trading since the corona crash (which killed off my previous business.) I've also been growing those returns, and have more than doubled them over the past four months. If anybody had told me this two years ago, I'd have thought them a lunatic.

In all that time, I've only had one week where I finished in the red despite initially having zero clue of what I was doing (except for risk management, which has been my holy grail from the beginning). That may mean that I'm over-cautious, but growing my risk tolerance at my own rate and only trading within it suits me just fine.

Most of that time I tried to figure out with kind of trader I can be. Took a while until I arrived at market neutral derivatives trading and market making.

The better question would be: Would you do it again? And knowing what I know today I'd probably say no. Way too many sacrifices and an insanely hard life until you make it. Probably the same like becoming an actor

It has been insanely hard. I've committed more concentrated effort to learning this than to almost anything I can remember in my life, and I've had to dig deep into who I am and grow (which is a goddamn painful process as you get older) as a person; to fix old, broken ideas about money, wealth, and success. AND I'd do it again if it took twice as long and was twice as hard. Trading is exactly the discipline and the tool set that I've wanted and needed for a long time - even though I didn't know it - in order to accomplish those things. The money, for all of its importance at this time, is incidental; that growth, and those tools, are what I've wanted for a long, long time.

 

[ValeryN]

That's why I would not advice anyone to pursue (day) trading. The opportunity cost for most people is very high and there's no guarantee at the end of the road regardless of how much work you put into this. That can probably be said about most entrepreneurial pursuits, although some are more difficult than others.

Entirely agree on opportunity cost.

Re "day" trading - is it really any different for swing trading or investing?

It's not like making it there doesn't consume all life and requires no sacrifices. I'd argue that the only difference is time spent executing. The rest is still filled with research and related activities.

All trading is very life consuming. Probably, most universally, till money is no longer a worry. That moment can be different for everyone. When that is achieved and there is a perception of consistency - trading can take very little time and the rest now can be spent on trying to gain what was lost during years of sacrifices.

Val

 

[Laissez Faire]

Entirely agree on opportunity cost.

Re "day" trading - is it really any different for swing trading or investing?

It's not like making it there doesn't consume all life and requires no sacrifices. I'd argue that the only difference is time spent executing. The rest is still filled with research and related activities.

All trading is very life consuming. Probably, most universally, till money is no longer a worry. That moment can be different for everyone. When that is achieved and there is a perception of consistency - trading can take very little time and the rest now can be spent on trying to gain what was lost during years of sacrifices.

Val

As far as I can tell - the difference in addition to time spent executing is that success or consistency in day trading is much harder to achieve than low frequency swing trading or investing.

That's not to say that swing trading is easy or does not require effort/research. But I do think the margin of error is lower and there's less pressure since you're not making decision in real time and so on.

 

[zghorner]

As far as I can tell - the difference in addition to time spent executing is that success or consistency in day trading is much harder to achieve than low frequency swing trading or investing.

That's not to say that swing trading is easy or does not require effort/research. But I do think the margin of error is lower and there's less pressure since you're not making decision in real time and so on.

So why would anyone opt to be a day trader if it is more difficult and the returns are less than longer duration approaches?

I am not hating at all, not one single bit on intraday folks as I have an extreme level of respect for anyone trying to make it as a trader...but I think day trading is popular due to the instant gratification we all desire as well as a possible lack of patience. From what I have seen and experienced myself, there is a higher concentration of new/inexperienced traders doing the intraday thing than longer duration trading.

Concerning difficulty...I consider being able to hold a winner for days, weeks, months is top-tier emotional control and an ability very lacking in most people. One might say: "that just isn't the trading style for me". Where I tend to say: "I need to develop my level of patience".

Our lord and savior Jesse Livermore said 100 years ago:
“It was never my thinking that made the big money for me, it always was sitting.”