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My sorry life story to date……… any suggestions……?


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My sorry life story to date……… any suggestions……?

  #31 (permalink)
 artemiso 
New York, NY
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Vanguard 401k
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Trading: Mutual funds
Posts: 1,152 since Jul 2012
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glennts View Post
In general it is true that financial compensation for the work done is in proportion to the difficulty of the job and the skill required to do that job. An occupation that requires little training and that anyone could do is going to pay very little money. Spending a few hundred dollars for a software package or to attend a training program is something anyone can do. How much compensation do you think that will qualify you for?

This is a very good post. There is no free lunch, and even if there was, it would be in such limited supply that you still need to be the first to get it.


glennts View Post
Earlier someone referenced Android programmers starting off at > $100,000. That programmer probably had 4 yrs of advanced education and likely more. What were the costs of the education and living expense during those years? Maybe an upfront investment of $150K < $200K. Chances are that programer started writing code when they were 12 yrs old. It was a result of the work they have done and the money they put up that the compensation they receive can be justified.

By the way, in my earlier post, both cases applied to the average 4-year college graduate. The average college graduate who goes into software development in SV earns more than the average college graduate who goes into investment banking or prop trading. Many of these college graduates never wrote a single line of code before they started college.

Moreover, college graduates who go into software development report more salaries on the extreme end - which can be explained by those few graduates who received venture funding or had vesting agreements with the small firm that was bought out by a large company (e.g. Google) and became wealthy quickly.

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  #32 (permalink)
 Anna K 
LA, ca
 
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Great post glennts! I wish I read this before I started

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  #33 (permalink)
Fred17
Toronto, Canada
 
Posts: 4 since Aug 2014
Thanks Given: 6
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Anna K View Post
Great post glennts! I wish I read this before I started

I also wish i read this post about 1 year ago.

I been told to improve my trading, I should write a diary of every trade that I made and why. Then review this diary every few weeks. This will help me learn from my mistakes do i don't keep on repeating them . I will learn to think about why other traders are doing and how I respond to them.

Other advice: Pay attention at the volume of trades of a security and its peaks and troughs. Trading is lot to do with the psychology of why the majority of traders are buying or selling a security. I would also try to be consistent in the indicators and time frames you use.

Hope this helps.

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  #34 (permalink)
 
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 DarkPoolTrading   is a Vendor
 
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glennts View Post
In general it is true that financial compensation for the work done is in proportion to the difficulty of the job and the skill required to do that job. An occupation that requires little training and that anyone could do is going to pay very little money. Spending a few hundred dollars for a software package or to attend a training program is something anyone can do. How much compensation do you think that will qualify you for?

Nicely put. I think all the replies in one way or another have been trying to tell @ShaunG to stop trying to look for quick fixes by purchasing software. But your reply really gets to the heart of it.

Shaun, make no mistake that coming into the world of trading puts you up against some of the smartest minds on the planet. On the one hand you have physicists, mathematicians and programmers with doctorate degrees working for professional trading firms, hedge funds, quant firms etc all looking for ways to take money out of the market. On the other hand you have professional traders who have been doing this for 20+ years. All of these people have dedicated their professional lives to the markets.

With the above in mind, somehow people continue to think they can just purchase some software online for a few hundred dollars, run a few back tests and then wait for the money to start rolling in. Sit down and really think about how absurd this is (sorry to be a bit blunt,...but we've all been there).

Start to really observe the markets. Just watch price and volume for the next few months. Develop an understanding of how markets move. Once you've developed an edge in the market (which in itself is no small task, but is certainly not the biggest hurdle when it comes to what actually makes a successful trader), then it all comes down to psychology. Arguably once you've found your edge, the rest of your trading career will be spent honing your psychology as it relates to your trading. That part will never end, and there is no software to do it for you.

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  #35 (permalink)
 ShaunG 
Cape Town/South Africa
 
Experience: None
Posts: 39 since Jul 2014
Thanks Given: 198
Thanks Received: 45

Thanks to all!

This is a “shout-out” to all who contributed to my post and offered me sound advice and constructive criticism.

From the first “to the point” answer from “Big Mike” himself, to the very well put answer from “glennts” and others.

Thanks to all of you! The last two weeks since I joined “futures.io (formerly BMT)” have been a real eye opener and a reality check for many of us to gain insight from.

Thanks again.

Regards ShaunG

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts his sails” .... something I try to apply to my life!

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  #36 (permalink)
 veggen 
Hoensbroek, Netherlands
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart
Trading: ES
Posts: 19 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 52
Thanks Received: 74

Wow!

Truly a lot of amazing responses in this thread. Really puts it clear how great this community really is. Like someone else wrote earlier here, I really do wish I had this information put this clear to me at the beginning of my trading journey.


A lot have been said allready, so dont really know if I can attribute anything more at all. However I will just write what I wish someone had told me back when I first loaded my first chart and decided to try and become a trader.

Like many have said here allready, in the beginning, focuse on a few markets. I would say just focus on one single. They all have their own personality. This has a lot to do with liquidity in each market and players involved. Therefore they move differently, at different times and with different intensity.

Second I would say do not focus so much on set ups and entry signals. They really are not the most important factor for your success. Try instead and put as much focus as possible on the market and its current state. Every price move has an effect. You have winners, and you have loosers. What causes the fastest and biggest moves in the market is loosers having to exit positions. And this happens in all timeframes. Like FT71 says all the time: Try and figure out what the market is trying to do, and how good of a job it is doing. Allso important and what I try and understand each day is: what is the effect of what the market is doing? If this happens in the market, which side is loosing, and at which prices are they likely going to have to take action.

Put your trading methodoligy into some kind of framework so that you can see the context and the bigger picture. Popular choices for this is Market Profile, Volume Profile, or simply using several timeframes. I have tried all, and settled with a mix of sorts. I like seeing several timeframes, because then I can see which timeframe is ranging, trending, breaking out and so on. Even though your 5 min chart looks to be in a strong trend up, the bigger timeframe might be down or range bound. I allso like to look at each timeframe as channels. This way I can see when one timeframe becomes stretched, aka. too far too fast. This happens on emotional spikes as an effect of traders exiting loosing posiotions or simply liquidating positions. Most important though: traders acting on emotions. Smart money do not buy after a 7 point spike in the ES right into 60 min downtrending resistance.

Volume profile is a good way to see where most of the trades took place. Same goes with volume profile as with price charts. They tell a story. If we have been in a range last 30 mins, and we then brake out and extend. The effect is we have one winning side, and we have one loosing side. With volume profile you can see fairly clear which price most loosers are holding contracts from. When price comes back close to this area, you know that many of these traders who are still sitting on loosing positions will want to exit this trade, and therefore giving support or resistance to the market.

Put in simple terms, what markets do, is: Consolidate, break out, extend, over extend, back and fill, and consolidate again. This process is reapeated again and again. Your job as a trader is to the best of your ability try and figure out at which point in this process we are and apply the appropriate strategy for this.

Think about what the effect is in the market after a trend day down (same goes for trend day up). You have a ton of winners, and you have a ton of loosers, many which are still holding loosing positions from up above. You allso have all the traders who were on the sidelines. They missed all of this "profit" from this trend day and are now
aking to join in on this "new" trend. The effect of all this is that early in the day (before you have a whole "new" group of winners and loosers) every attempt price makes to extend back up where it came from the day before, will be met with sellers (loosers liquidating longs, and new sellers wanting in on this "new" trend down).
On the other side, if price attempts to keep extending down the following day, the market becomes over extended on most timeframes. Smart money likely wont be selling down at these prices after such a big move down, and a lot of shorts will be looking to take profits. Effect of this usually means market having a hard time trending as cleanly as it did the day before. Allso important, something caused this trend day down we just witnessed. We most likely were consolidating on a higher timeframe chart. Something then caused the market to change perseption of value. Higher timeframe traders either decided to liquidate long positions, or sell short. Effect of this was that we broke out of the consolidation we were in on the higher timeframe chart, leaving a bunch of loosing longs who were forced to exit their positions. On the following day there might not be any more longs left from this higher timeframe consolidation needing to exit their longs, and therefore leaving less traders willing to sell down at these prices (of course the longer the consolidation on the higher timeframe, the more loosers need to exit). Bottom line beeing that the day following a trend day, more often than not ends up beeing an oscilating day. You as a trader have an edge now, because you can anticipate this happening and therefore apply a different strategy then you would on the trend day.

This post ended up beeing much longer then I had anticipated, and I really did not mean to go into such details about market behaviour. You have probably heard all of this before Shaun and if so I am sorry to have made you read through all of this.

My original intent in this post was simply to try and explain how much more important it is to focus on the market behaviour and the story the market is telling us each and every day, than it is to focus on setups and indicators. The market is simply people buying and selling from each other, and therefore you will allways have winners and loosers, fear and greed. Does not matter if it is your neighbour Joe buying 10 contracts, or some algoe operated by an HFT firm. The program this algoe is running on was written by a human after all.

When you learn to recognise the market environment and put the current action into context regarding trending action on appropriate timeframes, or simply lack of trend and lack of loosers. You will much easier be able to know which strategy to attack the market with regarding entry signals, and more importantly: likely profit potential.

Allways ask yourself, who are loosing and from where can I "lean" on them.

Good luck to you Shaun! Maybe consider starting a journal?

Cheers

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  #37 (permalink)
 ShaunG 
Cape Town/South Africa
 
Experience: None
Posts: 39 since Jul 2014
Thanks Given: 198
Thanks Received: 45


veggen View Post
Wow!

Truly a lot of amazing responses in this thread. Really puts it clear how great this community really is. Like someone else wrote earlier here, I really do wish I had this information put this clear to me at the beginning of my trading journey.


A lot have been said allready, so dont really know if I can attribute anything more at all. However I will just write what I wish someone had told me back when I first loaded my first chart and decided to try and become a trader.

Like many have said here allready, in the beginning, focuse on a few markets. I would say just focus on one single. They all have their own personality. This has a lot to do with liquidity in each market and players involved. Therefore they move differently, at different times and with different intensity.

Second I would say do not focus so much on set ups and entry signals. They really are not the most important factor for your success. Try instead and put as much focus as possible on the market and its current state. Every price move has an effect. You have winners, and you have loosers. What causes the fastest and biggest moves in the market is loosers having to exit positions. And this happens in all timeframes. Like FT71 says all the time: Try and figure out what the market is trying to do, and how good of a job it is doing. Allso important and what I try and understand each day is: what is the effect of what the market is doing? If this happens in the market, which side is loosing, and at which prices are they likely going to have to take action.

Put your trading methodoligy into some kind of framework so that you can see the context and the bigger picture. Popular choices for this is Market Profile, Volume Profile, or simply using several timeframes. I have tried all, and settled with a mix of sorts. I like seeing several timeframes, because then I can see which timeframe is ranging, trending, breaking out and so on. Even though your 5 min chart looks to be in a strong trend up, the bigger timeframe might be down or range bound. I allso like to look at each timeframe as channels. This way I can see when one timeframe becomes stretched, aka. too far too fast. This happens on emotional spikes as an effect of traders exiting loosing posiotions or simply liquidating positions. Most important though: traders acting on emotions. Smart money do not buy after a 7 point spike in the ES right into 60 min downtrending resistance.

Volume profile is a good way to see where most of the trades took place. Same goes with volume profile as with price charts. They tell a story. If we have been in a range last 30 mins, and we then brake out and extend. The effect is we have one winning side, and we have one loosing side. With volume profile you can see fairly clear which price most loosers are holding contracts from. When price comes back close to this area, you know that many of these traders who are still sitting on loosing positions will want to exit this trade, and therefore giving support or resistance to the market.

Put in simple terms, what markets do, is: Consolidate, break out, extend, over extend, back and fill, and consolidate again. This process is reapeated again and again. Your job as a trader is to the best of your ability try and figure out at which point in this process we are and apply the appropriate strategy for this.

Think about what the effect is in the market after a trend day down (same goes for trend day up). You have a ton of winners, and you have a ton of loosers, many which are still holding loosing positions from up above. You allso have all the traders who were on the sidelines. They missed all of this "profit" from this trend day and are now
aking to join in on this "new" trend. The effect of all this is that early in the day (before you have a whole "new" group of winners and loosers) every attempt price makes to extend back up where it came from the day before, will be met with sellers (loosers liquidating longs, and new sellers wanting in on this "new" trend down).
On the other side, if price attempts to keep extending down the following day, the market becomes over extended on most timeframes. Smart money likely wont be selling down at these prices after such a big move down, and a lot of shorts will be looking to take profits. Effect of this usually means market having a hard time trending as cleanly as it did the day before. Allso important, something caused this trend day down we just witnessed. We most likely were consolidating on a higher timeframe chart. Something then caused the market to change perseption of value. Higher timeframe traders either decided to liquidate long positions, or sell short. Effect of this was that we broke out of the consolidation we were in on the higher timeframe chart, leaving a bunch of loosing longs who were forced to exit their positions. On the following day there might not be any more longs left from this higher timeframe consolidation needing to exit their longs, and therefore leaving less traders willing to sell down at these prices (of course the longer the consolidation on the higher timeframe, the more loosers need to exit). Bottom line beeing that the day following a trend day, more often than not ends up beeing an oscilating day. You as a trader have an edge now, because you can anticipate this happening and therefore apply a different strategy then you would on the trend day.

This post ended up beeing much longer then I had anticipated, and I really did not mean to go into such details about market behaviour. You have probably heard all of this before Shaun and if so I am sorry to have made you read through all of this.

My original intent in this post was simply to try and explain how much more important it is to focus on the market behaviour and the story the market is telling us each and every day, than it is to focus on setups and indicators. The market is simply people buying and selling from each other, and therefore you will allways have winners and loosers, fear and greed. Does not matter if it is your neighbour Joe buying 10 contracts, or some algoe operated by an HFT firm. The program this algoe is running on was written by a human after all.

When you learn to recognise the market environment and put the current action into context regarding trending action on appropriate timeframes, or simply lack of trend and lack of loosers. You will much easier be able to know which strategy to attack the market with regarding entry signals, and more importantly: likely profit potential.

Allways ask yourself, who are loosing and from where can I "lean" on them.

Good luck to you Shaun! Maybe consider starting a journal?

Cheers

Hi “veggen’

Your post is very much appreciated.
Thanks for your advice and input!

Cheers

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  #38 (permalink)
 veggen 
Hoensbroek, Netherlands
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart
Trading: ES
Posts: 19 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 52
Thanks Received: 74



There was a perfect example from the ES this morning regarding stuck traders that I was talking about in my post. A very good example of how the market is telling a story and we do our best in trying to figure out when and where there are stuck traders in the market. Just like sitting on a poker table, only in the market you actually now which cards your oponent is holding. In this case they were holding shorts, which at this time was the loosing hand and you can bet hard against them, just like you do at the poker table when you now you have your opponent beat.

cheers!

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  #39 (permalink)
 
missionatsea's Avatar
 missionatsea 
Erie,Pa
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Ninja, Oanda
Broker: Oanda-practice demo
Trading: GBP/AUD...wild ride
Posts: 45 since Apr 2014
Thanks Given: 95
Thanks Received: 34

If you are wrong, bail. Cheaper to pay another commission than to sit there and say "how can I be wrong, it'll come back". I have only begun this journey, but refuse to fall prey to all the hype these pros offer. Mr. Bigalow will sit down with you for 2 days for a cool 5k. ??? Excuse me? I think not! These guys trade with your money and have millions of charts to pick from to show you how wonderful their systems work. The excellent trader from years back relied on brokers, newspapers and drawing their own charts. I have read over and over: learn how to trade. Unless I can trade with what is available to me, how would more make me better?

Best to you, Shaun, in your endeavors. Do hope you come out on top

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  #40 (permalink)
TimingZones
Walla Walla, Washington USA
 
Posts: 7 since May 2014
Thanks Given: 13
Thanks Received: 2


New here but am very impressed and touched with the effort persons have gone to in sharing from their experience to be supportive a trader wanting to be successful on this journey. Thank you all for sharing.

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