Why do people believe day trading will get them rich quick?

Quote from Locutus:

The retail trading portion of the market is not large enough for the banks to lift immense amounts of money from them.
Again I wouldn't expect you to know. You don't have either the experience or sufficient knowledge. While futures markets in themselves are zero sum games day by day, they are not so for the activities of the participants. Hedgers or arbitragers in a futures market don't require a profit in that market if the equivalent is otherwise saved on the physical commodity or in another market. This is not to say that funds for example don't take some big hits when they get it wrong. But immense gains are lifted from commodities markets through investment bank trading; you don't know that is your answer.

However I've always considered it possible for the 'start-out' amateur with careful thought and with the needed qualities to become very successful.

But good luck with whatever you are trying to do.
:)
 
Quote from Steven.Davis:

When I was in graduate school, everyone was focused on the idea that being a successful, well-respected, knowledgeable professor was the ultimate profession. The rest of the world existed to provide gainful employment to those who couldn't "measure-up."

This is the ultimate scam propagated by collage professors.

Quote from Steven.Davis:

The more time I spent at professor's homes and with their families, the more I understood that this was a self-selecting bias.

Absolutely agree. You have made the right choice.
 
Quote from Cheese:

Again I wouldn't expect you to know. You don't have either the experience or sufficient knowledge. While futures markets in themselves are zero sum games day by day, they are not so for the activities of the participants. Hedgers or arbitragers in a futures market don't require a profit in that market if the equivalent is otherwise saved on the physical commodity or in another market. This is not to say that funds for example don't take some big hits when they get it wrong. But immense gains are lifted from commodities markets through investment bank trading; you don't know that is your answer.

However I've always considered it possible for the 'start-out' amateur with careful thought and with the needed qualities to become very successful.

But good luck with whatever you are trying to do.
:)


Why are you constantly advising aspiring traders to trade "CL"? That is terrible advice for anyone without
years of experience. I really wonder what the motive of some posts on this site are.
 
Quote from Larson:

Why are you constantly advising aspiring traders to trade "CL"? That is terrible advice for anyone without
years of experience. I really wonder what the motive of some posts on this site are.

Larson, please. That is uncalled for. Cheese has contributed posts of value here for seven years, totalling almost 1700 posts. If you take the time to read them all you will notice a certain consistency. Firstly, the posts are polite and helpful. Secondly, they are clearly the thoughts of a very very advanced market participant. That may not be obvious to everyone, but it is obvious to some of us.

Without any fluffing or ego, Cheese points out helpful avenues for newbies to explore. Pick one market (eg CL) - formerly YM was suggested. Specialise. Analyse the movements. Then trade each leg / wave / gyration, buying at bottoms and turning around at tops.

I think it would be more valid to question the motives of someone who posts here several times per day, repeating the same textbook generalities and giving advice to others when it is clear to any reasonably intelligent and experienced market professional that these people cannot be anything like successful independent traders.

Now to ask Cheese a question regarding a piece of advice he offered or a comment he made is one thing. Questioning his motives, nay, implying that he may be giving deliberately dangerous advice is most unkind.

It is all the worse because the successful in this business can spot at a glance the various motives behind "advice" to newbies, which serves to keep them imprisoned and dependent, incapable of their own thought and therefore ultimately unable and unwilling to succeed. So a doubly vicious accusation to someone who has done the work.

Terrible advice? Really? Do you need years of experience to take consistent profits from a market? Does this depend on the market selected by the trader? Should a trader be trading any market if he cannot make the correct decisions in the traded instrument? Are spread, commissions, liquidity, average daily range, volatility, and number of typical gyrations not important aspects when seeking to extract as many points as possible from a market?
 
"Why do people believe day trading will get them rich quick?

for the same reasons they think they can beat 3 card monte dealers.
 
Quote from Handle123:

People are gullible, they see infomercials on TV, seeing some slick vendor selling some software where people are happy using some "foolproof" software waiting for either a green or red to buy or sell. People daydreaming "finally their pot of gold float their way," IMAGINE yourself making hundreds or thousands in a couple of hours or you can stay working your dull 9 to 5 job, cut to some poor smuck sitting at his desk with stacks of papers on his desk and the boss is yelling at him. IMAGINE buying that big house, that sports car, everyone patting you on the back, cut to same poor smuck sitting in bumper to bumper traffic smelling in fumes. IMAGINE sitting on the beach sucking down another pina colada while your hooter girl rubbing her bod against you, cut back to same poor smuck at his house trailer with bills piling up, wife is screaming "Hamburger helper again?". People envision delusions of grandeur thinking this can be so easy if I just buy that software.

The reality of course, if you want to acquire all that, it is very possible, but expect to work years at gaining the knowledge to do so. It is funny, by the time you finally get very good at this craft, what you think you wanted all along, you don't. You have to put in an incredible amount of hours, you have to have an infinite amount of passion for doing the nearly impossible. And when you start, what you think is the most important is nowhere near what is at the end. You have to turn into Mr. Spock, trade logical in an illogical world of emotions. You don't trade price, you trade an illusion of what people are thinking.

Day trading is a very tough way to make profits, sitting here behind the screen, just waiting for your patterns. And whether you manually trade or automate or both, you are always tweaking to make it better. Long hours has to be in your blood, not a whole lot of time sitting on the beach when you are running another backtest.

And any great piece of software or method is never going to be sold. And why mess with the bs of selling to the public, dealing with gullible people for a lousy 5 or 10 grand when you can make that in a month, week, day or an hour? The old line "I just want to give back", what a crock of crap, give back? give back to who?
Most vendors just want to stick it to the gullible to help pay back their losses. You want to give back, mentor 2/3 people for a year and expect nothing in return.

99% of the vendors out here will never show brokerage statements, cause they want you to dream about "IMAGINE".


Happy New Year All.


So far, this is the best answer!
 
Well, those people are right, day trading can make a good money, but after one spends a few years and a lot of money deliberately learning how to do that, not before. :p
 
Quote from jinxu:

I honestly don't understand why you use that quote b/c it's referring to someone who is pretending to be rich but really isn't.

Anyways, you could just simply post some recent blotters like this one of mine. It doesn't have to be audited or anything. Just provide some hard evidence for credibility.

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How on earth do you have FX compatibility with a ToS "papermoney" account? I thought ToS restricted FX trading to live customers.
 
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