Exactly! I used to make my living off sports betting (which is legal here), and I still use a lot of the same principles when it comes to trading. In fact, they work much better in this field.

From working at banks and being a monkey boy for "smart money" it seems to me every retail trader overestimates institutional trading.
Trading is a strange mix of right/left brain that the guy who gets a perfect SAT score doesn't have.
To my mind the ultimate trader is some burly, seasoned Chicago pitt guy with decades experience but also has a phd in financial engineering.
Lenny Baum is Simmon's Charlie Munger but you never hear about him. He can model anything and also has a speculator mindset.
IMO the real problem traders have overall, retail or institutional is laziness. Neither want to study hard enough to become Lenny Baum/Simmons or Wykoff/Livermore, let alone both.

People will buy any bullshit book on TA, yet all the advances in trading fall under quant finance for the last 15 years. You can skip college and learn Mathematica, yet try to find shit on mathematica and trading.

There will always be an edge to find in any kind of gambling game for those who are willing to far out bust their ass.
Refer to my sig quote...I quote that line whenever I hear someone say everything has been invented. As if people didn't think the same at that time.

That is awesome! This will be my first year betting discretionary sports betting wise. I think most retail traders are fools for not learning about other gambling games.
My rules are:
My edge is that my team is the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I've noticed that I totally have an edge when I would bet against them on the spread. At that point the spread + my knowledge of the matchup gives a nice margin of error.
I'll be running a peon Bodog account, so liquidity/line shopping is not part of the game.
I don't envision more than 2 or 3 bets the whole college season, especially that as a prior I think Nebraska is underrated right now. It is a hugely EV+ thing to do though just for drilling patience into the brain under uncertainty.

To me the best advice a newb trader can get is to do everything you can to expose yourself to making decisions under uncertainty, especially with money on the line.

All my winnings I'll blow off playing heads up 5nl poker. Which to me, any trader that doesn't play heads up poker is a complete fool.

Good thread.

I fully agree discretionary day-trading is not for everyone.

I always considered myself as disciplined but when it comes to trading you have to be really, REALLY, strong.

Also I've decided to automate my strategies and I discover a whole new world.

Actuall I find that doing research, programming, back-testing etc ... much more fun than trading in itself.

I don't feel exhausted at the end of the day anymore and the losses don't affect me.

So there's some great discretionay scalpers out there and my hat off to them but everyone has to find its own way

Finally got the autotrader to do half a decent job on the entries.

But then I decided to build my signals into an auto trade strategy. It was the best time and money I ever spent. It 100% solved my discipline issues. I have not entered a rogue trade outside of my plan for 2 years and am profitable. This may not work for everyone but was only way I could overcome the darkness that lurks in every trader.

haha, that's me exactly. well i didn't have the same problems as you. but it takes disipline to place stops etc etc. and just one bad day can cost big money.
So i'm developing some auto-strategies for that reason as well.

I know guys personally who made a few million feeling the market but went broke. When you try to feel the market you are betting against the house and the house will eventually take it all back. If you program the right auto system with good probabilities or have the discipline to manually trade a mechanical system you become the house.