One of the phrases that we hear all the time is this "trading is not a sprint, it's a marathon".
Given the similarities between trading and gambling, weather you believe to be the gambler or the casino, I am starting to question the "marathon belief".
I will highlight some points to raise the discussions:
profits in trading are often unequally distributed, meaning that 90% of the profits arise from only 10% of the trades. I read this very often in trading books and I observed this in my own results (look at this post in my journal
***ANALYSIS OF PROFITS DISTRIBUTIONS***
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the relation between profitability and playing it safe. As you know my biggest issue is giving back most of my profits in one single day. I am aware that this is the …
some very famous traders and speculators, like George Soros, Paul Tudor John, Mike Burry, CIS or BNF (the last two are Japanese), made huge trades that made them famous and they bet most of their assets on one big play
if trading has any similarities with Poker, also poker players made fortunes quite rapidly and not steady incomes over the years
Finally I will leave you with this video with the story of Don Johnson that made 15 millions in one night playing Blackjack. He agreed with the casinos some slights changes in the rules of BlackJack that turned the stats in his favor..... so technically he had an advantage over the casino. However he made 15 million in one night not in one year.
Let me know what you think!
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To point #3; that may be true however they didn’t learn how to play poker over a weekend. The marathon is the learning process and the applying what you learned. The sprint is having a edge and betting big when the conditions are right. I would also point out they never talk about the players/traders who bet big and lost it all. Guarantee there are far more of those than the ones who made it big.
Personally I will stick with the marathon.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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My opinion on "trading is a marathon" mentality is not such to preclude you from having large winning trades, but rather to keep you grounded in the sense that you are not going to go from knowing anything about trading to making consistent money in a short amount of time.
With your examples of the famous traders or poker players... they all have extensive training and experience because they have been consistently profitable over many years, which allowed them to make large bets with confidence. You can have both.
I know consistently profitable traders that take 3k home w/w and others who take 120M home w/w.
Consistency and high profits are not mutually exclusive.
Let me know what you think.
The following user says Thank You to rafasc for this post:
yes, I partially agree with you but at least for me having this marathon mentality often prevents me to bet bigger on some very good trades.
Looking at the journals of many traders in the blog I can see we all have this issue. You will see some of them making 500 USD some day, others making 1000USD, some of them they will call it a good day when they make 2000 USD and then they will give back 4K in one day (and I am part of them). What if you were able to sit on your had most of the day and then bet 2K to gain 8K in one day? most of the time you will not do this.
You are afraid of betting 2K on a single trade that might be a runner. ... then 3 days later you lose 3K with ten consecutive losses of 300 USD.
This happen to me all the time.
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I think you've somewhat re-defined the terms here, and yes, there is probably a succession of sprints. Maybe only a few big ones. (Also flops. )
But the meaning that I take of "marathon" is that it's something that takes a long damn time. Since trading well takes a long damn time, I agree with the others who have said that no, it's a marathon.
Thinking about the whole span of time it takes, parts of it are over quickly, but the total span is still long, and you need patience, endurance, and, as @LastDino said, something more as well.
But it isn't quick, that's for sure.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
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