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Profit Guilt


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Profit Guilt

  #21 (permalink)
 dark pool 
detroit+mi/usa
 
Posts: 18 since Mar 2015


Anagami View Post
Your reply to Big Mike is verging on idiotic.... I suspect that is because of your own subconscious guilt over your past life as you mention in your post.

Done with the thread.

"Sunconscious guilt". I'll take that into consideration. Yep, hide under someone else's shadow buddy. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

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  #22 (permalink)
 dark pool 
detroit+mi/usa
 
Posts: 18 since Mar 2015


Zxeses View Post
I totally understand where you are coming from, I feel this way every time I go to the local supermarket to buy eggs and milk.

When I was younger I was a farmer, so milk and eggs was a matter of getting my ass out of bed and going to milk the goat and pickup the fresh eggs. No money traded hands, and of course I had no concept of the idea of "work"="money", work was just something you did cause you had to do it. At my younger age, I never made the connection between the reward and the cost, it was just so much of a given there was no reason to think about it.

These days, when I pay ever-increasing prices for eggs and milk, knowing full well that the supermarket is taking 50% profit, that the farmer is doing much less work these days for a dozen eggs then I did, and yet here I am paying X dollars for eggs, what has changed really?

Did the supermarket cheat me by being an easy buy? not really, they are less then 5 minutes down the road.
Did the farmer cheat me by being an easy work load? not really either, he has more customers and production, he needs to make his business as efficient as possible.

So who really has given in here? have I been cheated? no, I appreciate the gift of an easy buy with no farm work, I can now wake up in the morning, fix a BLT (with a runny egg, you must try this!) and be off to work in less time so I can keep up my faster paced life.

When I trade, I keep all these things in mind (maybe it would be better said: all these things influence my view), especially trading futures.

Just because trading (the act) is easy, doesn't mean trading is easy (the risk/strategy) and for every dollar I make, I could have lost -- IF I didn't give it my best knowledge, skill, practice and patience -- which I would summarize as my "work". And just because you check 12 chickens butts at 5am in the morning doesn't mean you have a dozen eggs, it usually meant 2-3 eggs, and 9-10 new smudges of crap on your hand.

Just like trading S&P huh?


I like that story about the farm. Incidentally I was planning on buying land and growing some of my own food hydroponically/or otherwise. Kind of going the opposite way I suppose-away from the marketing and noise. With your background, do you feel that food is proportionately valued with the rest of this market?

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  #23 (permalink)
 
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 Zxeses 
San Francisco CA
 
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Anagami View Post
Are you serious or are you joking?

The fact that both parties agree to every transaction makes the trading absolutely fair AND moral. Not sure why one should feel guilty when everybody is in agreement.

Fair and moral have absolutely no connection. "fair" implies justice. Moral has nothing to do with justice or fairness. Moral is based on Love and is what is best for people, and many times justice and fairness have nothing to do with that. Just because the two co-incite with each-other often enough does not equate equality nor parity.

This may sound like a semantic argument, but definition here is important, there is no morality in capitalism, no matter how fair or just it is.

Trading is nothing more then one mans wisdom against another, regardless of what is exchanged -- money, wives, camels or gold...

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  #24 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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If you feel guilty then donate to charity. Isn't the money better off donated than in the hands of the super rich?

Trickle down effect doesn't really work as well as economist have thought. So, be the change you wish to see in the world.


R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
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  #25 (permalink)
 pipandrun 
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tturner86 View Post
When I raced motorcycles I wanted to kill the other riders.

..such a bad boy you are?

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  #26 (permalink)
 pipandrun 
Cologne, Germany
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@dark pool
I know what you mean, but did you ever consider this aspect:

Trading is a bet, a game. The conditions are clear: one side says the market rises, the other side says the market falls.
One will win. Why should the winner feel guilty now? He could be the looser, too. And where is the respect against the one, who has lost? Doesn´t it make it double hard for the one who has lost, if the winner now aditionally loads his feeling of "guilt" on him, too? This is why sportsmen and women shake hands after a game. Until nothing is manipulated and the winner doesn´t start to ridicule the looser, everything is ok, or?

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  #27 (permalink)
 dark pool 
detroit+mi/usa
 
Posts: 18 since Mar 2015


System View Post
This probably explains some otherwise great predictors producing low net profits and sometimes even losses. They fail to exit at targets.

I figured out what this guilt thing is about. I've heard so many stories about traders coming in, having a hard time, emotionally struggling-that I expected to do the same. But, as I kept my risk low and let my profits-I began to wonder if this was all there really was to it. I guess I felt guilty over "not paying my dues", and recognizing that something was wrong I scaled back and came here. This was risk control. I do not plan to pay my dues now, or ever. I will also admit that I was afraid of incurring my first drawdown, but I realize when it happens it'll happen and I'll push through it. Happy trading!

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  #28 (permalink)
 
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 tturner86 
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pipandrun View Post
..such a bad boy you are?

No love in war...

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  #29 (permalink)
JerseyJim
Philadelphia, PA
 
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@DarkPool:

You really think you have this all figured out, don't you? You're missing a few important chapters of your "here's how it works" fairy tale.

It's really very simple. If you're a trader, you're running a service business. Yes, even as a speculator you are providing a service. That service is price discovery. If you don't understand that then you have no right to even open a trading platform (or even a trading forum unless you're here to ask questions and learn). How do you think any market would work if there was no one willing to take the other side of a contract (or if you had to wait days, weeks or months for that contract to be filled)? Same way any business would work with little or no customers... business would grind to a halt and there would be no economy. I'll stop there because others have already addressed this point in more detail and I choose to help you understand something else.


dark pool View Post

...Upon further reflection, I realized that anybody who enters the market is essentially a gambler. Once that money leaves their pocket and is in the market-it's no longer any individual's money. It is the markets money, and being made up of all our psychologies/fears/greeds-it will do what it does. I am merely an account operator who lends money to gamblers to play the game they love. Anything I'm missing?

Any consistently profitable trader is NOT a gambler. That trader is a business person. Sure, many gamblers come to the market... but most don't stay long... and not just because there aren't any free drinks or .99 cent shrimp cocktail. If you insist on equating what we profitable traders do as "gambling" then maybe this analogy will work better for you; we are not gamblers, we are THE HOUSE. Like a casino, we operate with an edge; and like a casino we exploit that edge (not any particular market participant) over time. And over time the law of large numbers says we will come out winners. As a "new trader" if you don't develop an edge and learn to think this way you will not last. (Thanks for the money by the way ).

Finally, the money I choose to risk IS NOT the market's money, it's MY money. It's working capital that I control. I can hit "buy" or "sell" on my keyboard and have my orders filled almost instantly to open OR close any order because of other traders who are willing to provide that price discovery/liquidity service.

Not trying to come across as an @sshole, just trying to help you understand that you're not doing any deep thinking here... you're just fantasizing and trying to make a story up about what's going on in the markets... and that story fits what you WANT to believe. It's not really that complicated.

If I haven't been helpful to you here and you really do want long-term success in the markets, good luck because you're going to need more than your share for this to work out for you. In fact, here's another psychological project for you to consider... try trading for longer than a few months and then come back and tell us what it feels like to lose everything when your luck runs out.

Jim

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  #30 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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You guys are also forgetting another thing. When you exit the market with a profit it doesn't mean someone else exited with a loss. It could mean you exited while someone else entered. Even if you did exit with a profit and are matched with someone else that exited it doesn't mean they have a loss either. Their trade could be the other half of a hedged position in another asset.

This is a very rough example so bear with me:
For instance, lets say someone bought x amount of shares of Exxon Mobil but wanted to offset the price of oil affecting their trade so they sell x amount of oil too (this is assuming there's a positive correlation between Oil and Exxon mobil). Exxon Mobil shoots up 10 dollars and oil shoots up 5, so the difference is a net gain of 5. Even though the trader loss some money on their oil trade they're net positive.

That being said, you can't really tell what's going on the other side of a trade or how your trades affect other people in the anonymity of the market. Either way, if you don't take the other side of the trade someone else eventually will be it bot or human.

R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
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Last Updated on March 31, 2015


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