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Every time it is mentioned somewhere else on the internet there is a lot of negativity around day trading. Most people think it's absolutely insane to make money by day trading. This is the only place where I feel safe to talk about trading.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
In your other thread you just mentioned the 90/10 statistics, so if we are to believe the statistics it is quite obvious that people would have interacted more with the people that failed at day trading than succeeded, and by huge margin.
Day trading is a risky business and it is viewed as such - majority of people don't like risk. Just look at the growth of the government spending around the world to confirm that majority of people naturally prefer security.
Hello all. I haven't written on futures.io (formerly BMT) for some time now. I'd like to start a new thread sharing some of my thoughts and experiences. I am a professional daytrader (It really sounds arrogant to say this, but it is the best …
"Day trading" is just a hold over from 1999 with clueless people quitting their jobs and riding the bull for a year. It is a poisoned term.
I don't open and close positions intraday unless I get stopped out because the markets don't move enough for me in one day and without the bigger moves over time I don't think I have an edge.
Only a fool would make an argument though that trading intraday is foolish but trading with a holding period that includes at least one overnight is smart. Maybe you can make the argument that markets are efficient enough to make all trading foolish but to make the argument based on holding time is just not well thought out.
1. Don't listen to anything anyone says about trading other than people who are making money trading.
2. There are people who make money trading and those that lose money trading. There is no in-between.
3. Most people lose money trading because it is a performance skill that requires years of practice and they aren't willing to put in the time or effort.
4. Most people who start trading do so because they think it is easy.
5. People don't like to admit when they are wrong and if they fail at trading they don't think it's themselves that was wrong but the market and trading in general.
Voilà
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
While this post my be seen as judgemental, and critical of day-trading, there are underlying issues that really apply to all forms of trading. I do think that most people who wish to day-trade are driven by greed and they believe that carrying no overnight risk will allow them to trade with more leverage and thus make more money. Note that I said "most people".
Have a look at the video in this link and allow yourself to compare yourself to Mr Earl. -
I found that Mr. Earl displays a lot of humility, lives very frugally, has a lot of patience, accepted that he is not an expert, and does not really make money his life's focus.
Most people I know are not really that humble, need to make money to support their lifestyles, want all of it now, think they are better than everyone else and always need to keep up with the Joneses.
If you now take people with the traits I mentioned above and allow them to trade with massive leverage, it becomes quite easy to see why most blow up their accounts, and also why day-trading has a bad reputation. There are very few successful day-traders exactly for that reason.
Big Mike has also posted somewhere that once money stopped being important to him, he managed to turn his trading around. Yet most people who day-trade do so exactly because they believe it is the quickest route to making loads of money.
As a final thought, Mr. Earl has paid off his home, put his kids through college and has more in his brokerage account than most day-traders are ever likely to have, yet most people will find a reason not to implement his method. People will find excuses that it a) won't suit them, b) they can do better, etc. and most of them never end of with his level of success. I personally don't think his method is that great, but I find that his attitude about life and money is fantastic, and that he found a way to work with his weaknesses to turn them into strengths.
Edit: Oh, and as can be seen in the last sentence above, I have already found an excuse not to use his method...
Let's face it, it is kind of justified. If we look at the stats, if only 5 people make it out of a 100, that is a terrible stats for any jobs. So you can understand why the negativity. As someone else mentioned it is though a poisoned term, because by day trader everyone thinks of the roaring 90s, when everyone and their mother made money until; the show came to an abrupt stop.
But again, I can think of only maybe art (like music or being an actor) with such a high failure rate. Aspiring actor is pretty much the equivalent of day trader, although a person trying to make it as an actor usually does some kind of paying job on the side, instead of just pissing it away to the broker...
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