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who are the winning traders?
- Thread starter Technician
- Start date
Quote from retaildaytrader:
Its not just elitetrader that is full of lies, but the world of finance and trading in the broadest most general sense. Madoff is the most popular example. You will never truly know the real story unless you see account statements or tax returns and even then those can be faked. Many a fool has been duped out of his cash as a result of those on message boards.
Beyond trading and finance, the world, in the most broadest and general sense, is full of lies and misrepresentations. There is no way you will ever know "the truth". Everyone lies and misrepresents to a certain extent.
There are a few honest and upfront individuals in this world, but only a very few. No one is ever rewarded for being 100% honest, but just the opposite. The world encourages you to fib and lie to a certain extent.
Les say a trader on here appears to make all the right calls. They can still be bad traders with poor money and risk management skills. Anyone can make a call, but not everyone can trade with real money.
Tim Sykes seemed to manipulate Covestor so that is definately not the solution. In fact, I have seen young teenagers manipulate complex video games finding ways to cheat the program. If they can find cheats in complex video games then they will find a way to cheat covestor.
Ronald Reagan had a saying that he sourced from an old Russian proverb. "Trust, but verify" You should generally trust people, but each step of the way rigorously verify what they are saying.
According to a study in Europe people are said to lie up to 200 times - PER DAY - on average.
And that's only Western Europe to the best of my knowledge.
Quote from Technician:
can we make a list? I think this would be beneficial to a lot of newbies like myself.
no jokes please! serious answers so I can comb through post history and such.
Before you go searching through ET for profitable traders, consider this.
this is the honest to god truth on how it works. yes, i am profitable/make a modest living, of only 2 1/2 years, without any down months.
1. you start with 10, and 2-3 don't fail. they are profitable within a year.
2. those 2-3, within 5 years, are no longer trading for whatever reason.
and this is the kicker.
3. even the ones that i've met that personally lasted 5 years, they had almost a year without making cash/a downturn that made them rethink their lives/trading period.
If I were to tell you anything else, about some guy thats still been trading after 8 years (he'd fit under category 3) or some guy whos been 'in the game' since 1980, ect/bs/blah blah, we'd be talking about different things/different types of traders/theres a good chance they aren't that active a trader to begin with.
bottom line is that active traders/scalpers (basically people who aren't trading on their IB account/managing some fund) follow this tendency. I'm not saying you'd be one of those, or that I would (although I'd be somewhat of a fool to randomly exclude myself from these 3 scenarios) be one of the many in due time.
The absolute crazy part in this is that I was told all of this before I even started, and I still went ahead and did it.
I don't seriously regret anything at this point lol..I'm not laying awake at night going, "what have I done". but looking back/even now, i sometimes wonder whether I had really thought it through. For those that just threw themselves into the business, thats one thing. But for someone like me that had been told all this beforehand, certainly raises some questions. Maybe thats what makes a trader profitable to some degree...some appetite for risk I suppose. But really...its kind of crazy that I, or anyone, that makes a modest living (isn't making 1 mill a year/99 percent of profitable traders) continues to trade for a living accepting the above 3 scenarios as fact....which if you haven't, you're completely dellusional or outside of 'the average profitable trader' statistic. because everytime I hear some joker go, "well i know some guy thats been in the business for 10 years and is still trading" they always fail to mention scenario 3, or have very little to say about it in general...or its always coming from someone who CURRENTLY isn't trading...the irony hearing this from said person is almost always too much for my little pea brain to bear.
I lie in bed at night thinking "what have I done" every day..
anyway my trading is improving.. I'm not making anything but I'm not really losing anything either.
but you can achieve as much by not trading at all.. so..
anyway my trading is improving.. I'm not making anything but I'm not really losing anything either.
but you can achieve as much by not trading at all.. so..
there are some discouraging elements to my post no doubt. but in no way am I trying to send you one way or another. I'm just giving you the truth.
nobody ever really tells you the truth when it comes to this. and even when you hear it, you a. don't give a fuck, b. don't want to think about it.
i know i was both a and b. but just saying, this is actually how it works, which you can never really know till you meet and see it play out in other peoples/traders lives...people you worked with, people you've met in trading. until you see the walking statistics in real life, it doesn't make sense; its actually not something pleasant to thinka bout. but after seeing endless amounts of proof, you'll pretty much come to the same conclusion as me, or just go back to thinking a and b.
nobody ever really tells you the truth when it comes to this. and even when you hear it, you a. don't give a fuck, b. don't want to think about it.
i know i was both a and b. but just saying, this is actually how it works, which you can never really know till you meet and see it play out in other peoples/traders lives...people you worked with, people you've met in trading. until you see the walking statistics in real life, it doesn't make sense; its actually not something pleasant to thinka bout. but after seeing endless amounts of proof, you'll pretty much come to the same conclusion as me, or just go back to thinking a and b.
Quote from Technician:
no jokes please! serious answers so I can comb through post history and such.
If you can't tell sense from bullshit you have no chance of success in this business.
Consider learning who to listen to and who to ignore as part of your trading education.
Listening to stupid ideas is taking a bad trade. Stubbornly adhering to what is mainstream is averaging down a losing trade, etc.
When you can tell by the posts who knows and who does not know you are 95% of the way there.