Why Trading is so Hard

[alistera]

How can you be around on ET for 9 years, with thousands of posts and still post stuff like this?

1. Literally everyone who is active on the markets is doing it for money, to earn money, not to lose money.
Being or getting rich depends on what you define as being rich. For you $1K is probably a lot, for Destriero it's change.

2. If it were only as easy as "shorting the market heavily with size" ...

This is the truth, I know some of the best SAP consultants in the world working at CEO level of Fortune 500, it used to be Financials control 80-95% of everything and the rest fight for the scraps, today Financials control 95-99%, it's always about the money.

Anyone saying anything different is either unsuccessful or they are offering something of no value, sure there were a couple who undersold themselves which everyone else benefited from, but the past years they either threw themselves off a cliff or came to their senses and started charging for everything.

You can make your $millions shorting the market heavily with size, but everything is correlated to one which means even with large capital if you overspend $10s, $100s, $1,000s while you are waiting for the short you will most likely miss it, happened to everyone I know in the 2020 Oil short.

 

[PPC]

I’m looking for honest answers. I don’t care what the gurus and system sellers say, trading is hard, really really hard. Also I’m no rookie, 7 years into this with very serious effort and education on trading. Anyone who says different is either brand new or trying to sell you something.

I think the biggest reason is that our emotions get in the way of us executing our strategy.
Idea to make it easier,,, only trade first 3 hours of day.

How about you? What do you think makes trading so hard? And what is your best idea to make it easier.

Here is my honest answer without sugarcoating:

Trading is so hard because most of us think that we’re the next market wizard in the making instead of accepting that we’re always one step away from acting like an idiots. Been there done that myself.

These days my biggest edge comes from the above understanding, i.e., Being aware that I’m always one step away from acting like a moron and that I'm susceptible to self-sabotage, plus knowing that there are lots of traders acting like kids who can’t control themselves (been there, done that myself).

Therefore, it is actually a blessing that trading is so hard, and counterintuitive, because that's how one can build a REAL LASTING EDGE around that

On needs to trade from the attitude and mental state of acceptance, and not from greed and fear.

We all have to go through it and pay the price, there are no shortcuts (at least long-term), it is what is.

Imagine if trading would be easy, then the edge that comes from internal control and self-work would no longer be an edge.

It is a blessing that trading is hard, even though it is a real pain in the butt to overcome our own biases and work inside our own heads.

 

[smallfil]

The problem is there is a wealth of BAD information out there as well and most cannot tell the difference.

Just search through EliteTrader looking for trading information and you find people with opposite views defending them to the death.

That is why you have to do some research on what is the truth. There are a lot of BS artists trying to impress you but, all they are doing is troll people. The real truth is not hard to see because you can prove it to yourself. Do not take what you are told as fact. I got into a debate on these message boards about trend following and they said it did not work. I said trend following works and numerous top traders like Jesse Livermore, Jerry Parker (turtle trader taught by Richard Dennis) have already proven it by making hundreds of millions in the stockmarket. Richard Dennis when he ran the Turtle program of his was reported to have earned $400 million. Most top traders on Jack Schwager's books use trend following and run very successful hedge funds making tens of millions majority of years. They do have losing years but, the losses are very small, in the range of 5-8%. So, who do you believe, those top traders using trend following who have actually made hundreds of millions in the stockmarket or the ET trolls telling you trend following does not work?