Who Is A Bad Trader?
- Thread starter Peter brandley
- Start date
If you ever did sports it can be a good analogy. You exercise a lot without any noticeable results for quite a long time. Then suddenly realize that what was so hard for you is not anymore, sometimes so easy that you don't even notice how you do it.
It's like that in any skill. Just relax and enjoy the learning process.
I just screwed up a good trade due to absence of reflex for the new trading platform I use since today. Cancelled stop-loss by mistake. Not just for myself but other people accounts as well. So immediately close it for way less profit than I expected.
But I know it's no biggie. Will exercise more with the platform until have a muscle memory for it and erase old muscle memory of previous platform.
That's how we learn anything.
My sister is a school teacher... works with vision impaired kids from preschool thru high school. She was sitting with some of her other teacher friends about a year ago when I posed some question about learning to trade ...to reach a level of mastery.
They all said that they didn't know anything about trading, but knew how we learned. What I took away from their conversation was that if I wanted to reach a level of true mastery, then... I needed to go back and do school-type assignments for each part of trading. If I relied on anything because I read it in a book, or someone said.... Then some part of me knew that and didn't really trust it. I needed to go back and prove to myself two things: that both something worked in and of it self, and I also needed to prove that I could do it, that it worked for me.
But I don't mean I'm gritting my teeth trying to prove things. Just that I'm taking the time to work thru the parts, go through the process of learning. Picking up the pieces one at a time. My goal is not the quick money, but the mastery of the element. ...as much as I can.
Once I digested what my sister and her friends said. Oh, my work load increased a lot! But it's OK, there is a satisfaction in it.
The part you are talking about is also so important. You do the homework and drills, and somehow one day it clicks, or just segways into a different level. You don't know exactly why, but there it is. Glad you are along for the ride.
They all said that they didn't know anything about trading, but knew how we learned. What I took away from their conversation was that if I wanted to reach a level of true mastery, then... I needed to go back and do school-type assignments for each part of trading. If I relied on anything because I read it in a book, or someone said.... Then some part of me knew that and didn't really trust it. I needed to go back and prove to myself two things: that both something worked in and of it self, and I also needed to prove that I could do it, that it worked for me.
But I don't mean I'm gritting my teeth trying to prove things. Just that I'm taking the time to work thru the parts, go through the process of learning. Picking up the pieces one at a time. My goal is not the quick money, but the mastery of the element. ...as much as I can.
Once I digested what my sister and her friends said. Oh, my work load increased a lot! But it's OK, there is a satisfaction in it.
The part you are talking about is also so important. You do the homework and drills, and somehow one day it clicks, or just segways into a different level. You don't know exactly why, but there it is. Glad you are along for the ride.
Both you and Ol' Yella raise a good point about the ninetrans guy. Not one of his blog readers, myself included, thought he was pulling down anything less than 2 or 3 grand a day. Then he posts his trading statistics and it turns out he's making less than me... and that's bad. I am sure his blog traffic will cool over the coming weeks ... I do appreciate his candor however... for what it's worth.
What... I can look around and see that the idea of origins via evolution has an overwhelming amount of evidence that doesn't fit the theory. I'd like to sue that sector of the education system for everything they have but it will never happen.. all "fact" in the classroom, all "theory" in court...
Exactly..... things are not always what they seem.
I am not a 'trading is impossible' guy, and I believe at-home retailers traders can turn profits--- but IMO the misconception is that these small retailers can make a living doing so. How many people out there were thinking excitedly at some point "if nine trans can do this then think what I can do with my 10k account!!"
Similar with a guy who used to post here and was chased off ET for lying-- going by MFbreakout. He was posting calls in the CL Redux thread and it appeared he was making 2-3 grand a day, almost never had a losing trade. But on closer inspection, the calls were all a little late, giving the impression that he was waiting for things to go in his favor before posting, some were totally after the fact where he announced a profitable exit on a trade he never gave an entry for.
He was posting charts in other threads, and for a while he must have accidentally turned off the privacy (******) feature so you could see his account balance for a couple of weeks. During that time he was continuing to post killer calls in CL Redux, his account balance was fluctuating by a few hundred each day, and he was a net loser during that time. The truth is he was a 1-lot trader operating below breakeven. He does the same thing on BMT now and two guys caught onto it, but no one else seemed to care. I have seen people use him as justification for their pursuit of trading for a living on a small account, and it's sad because he is definitely not what people think he is. I dont know why he does it, he's a nice guy who seems genuinely interested in trading for a living. My guess is he does it to pump himself up and keep the dream alive.... all the attention he gets from his followers must be a nice ego boost.
As I said before, things are not always what they seem.......
I learned, through my terrible golf game, that you don't get better if you aren't intellectually honest with yourself about your abilities. It's easy to take a lot of mulligans and not count all your shots - but it doesn't make you a better golfer.
