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have not had issues.. but I am not on 100% of the time... I would suggest you monitor your network connection/routes... that is sometimes the reason.. I know my cable at home goes nuts and I have issues... when I trade from the office, I never have issues (but we have pairs of DS3's going to the internet) ... I have DSL backup as well, but it is used in case of true failure, not hiccups..
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
if one competes with one self, how does one know he/she is pushing the limits of his/her capabilities? how else to know if you lost money when everyone else made money, to then determine what did you do wrong, where there were failures, etc... by competing with others that you know have achieved success, you can push yourself a lot harder than by setting weekly goals to outdo yourself, and you can see if mistakes were made when otherwise you would have thought you made none... just my opinion..
Actually, in a zero sum market you are directly competing with other traders. Your gains come from their losses, and vice-versa. So in a very real sense, those guys at the top of the leaderboard are making the market more difficult for you, just as every new losing trader entering the market it easier for everyone else. That's why it's harder to trade in low volume choppy times - because the large crowd of losing traders is absent, and it's really the pro scalpers competing against each other. In a high volume environment, lots of losers are present and so the market becomes easier for those who know what they are doing, because the level of competition is much lower.
I guess I look at it a little different. I have an amount that when attained each day means life is good. Do I want to make more? Sure. Do I always make my target? No. The problem is that it will not help me achieve my daily goal at all by competing with someone else (of course it could help someone else). In fact it might make it worse by putting pressure on yourself. Instead, I use my goals to monitor how I am doing.
I know of a great trader (who shall remain nameless), has a blog, runs classes, brags about how great he is, blah blah blah. He does not need more money, but he has a miserable life because he puts way too much pressure on himself, and he pays the price physically as well due to the pressure. I would even go so far as say he is a trade addict (literally). He thrives on the competition, but I would never want that life.
Well, I never meant to say that you should live life like a person addicted to competition... simply that you are in direct competition with other traders every time you put on a trade, whether you consider it to be competition or not. The markets literally are a poker game, especially the futures markets where gains and losses are matched up every day.
It works exactly like a game of Texas Hold'Em... the winners are taking in exactly what the losers are losing, minus the rake taken by the house (in this case, that is the commissions charged by your broker and the exchange). And just like in a game of poker, players bluff and pull tricks to try to take each others money.
Pro traders are a lot better at it, which is why when the losers exit the game for a while, the markets become whippy and choppy - that is experienced poker hands trying to outwit one another. When losers come back in during a high volume trend, the pros lick their chops and clean up, exactly like pro players will prey on a bunch of fish at a poker table who don't know what they are doing.
What makes this particularly easy in trading, is that about 95% of people who participate in the market don't even realize that they are involved in a poker game, and don't understand the basic principles of why and how the market moves. They are trying to treat it like it's some kind of mathematical equation to be solved, which is why they ultimately fail... because that's not what the market is.
Nobody would enter a poker game and say "I don't care how other people do, I just want to do well", because in a poker game it is understood that your gains will come from other people's losses, and that you are in competition with the other people at the table. The markets are exactly the same thing... although I do agree with your general statement that one should lead a balanced life and not get too obsessed as your friend is. Just never forget that you are in direct competition with other traders, whether you want to be or not, because that is the nature of the game.
sounds like a lot of traders out there... and yes, the guys who are great traders end up getting addicted to it because of the competition factor, and the desire to succeed and the drive to accomplish their goal..
from my side... when I mean compete, I dont mean I go toe to toe... I am not there at all... but rather compete in the sense of pushing myself harder to achieve my goals/daily targets or surpass them...
1) I dont have a $1MM account, my account is greater than average as I am well capitalized, but not what I call large...
2) I dont have the expertise in futures trading that I bet the two of them have, but the point is that I would love to get there..
3) my daily goal is $50 per car, I would sure love to make my IT salary in a single day (but did I mentioned that my acccount size is not $1MM? )
So I compete with them, in terms of pushing myself to be better, learn more, apply myself more, etc. I read a thread about prop-trading the other day that was excellent.. which forced me to re-evaluate my trading overall and look at areas to improve it. Discipline was one of those areas. I dont know DOW & MAX, but I attempt to guess some of their characteristics that made them successful, and based on monitoring their P&L I can tell they are very discipline when they are losing, and they have lost .. trust me... and that they average in their winners... there is always a lot of mention of those two characteristics @ futures.io (formerly BMT), but this is seeing it in practice which helps me..
