Totally right Bob. Many people want to believe the dream of riches thru easy trading. Most people do not want to face or heard the reality.

Just last week, some guy wanted my advice, after he lost $150K trading in the last 18 months. I said "stop trading."

He has not responded back.

People like him are one reason these d-bag vendors survive.

Wow, that is a chuck of money. One would have thought that he would have been doing some risk management to control his losses.

10% a month compounds to ~245% p.a. To put that into perspective Ed Seykota earned 200% p.a. with 50% drawdowns during his best period - search his FAQ - I believe that was posted in 2014 and relates to a question about him going bankrupt. Mark Minervini averaged 220% p.a. for a 5 year period. Another Market Wizard who potentially managed to return more than 200% p.a. is Richard Dennis, but his performance numbers are never quoted. Dan Zanger is not a Market Wizard, but his performance during 1999 is phenomenal. I may be missing some, but you get the idea - obtaining these numbers puts you in very elite company.

I know it seems like scalping is a low-risk way to grow the account, but in reality it never really works out that way. Based on conversations with some people on this forum, there may be some who accomplish this, but the odds are extremely low. The shorter your time-frame for trading, the less likely you are to make money - once you've traded a while, you may see why.

I suspect risk management is the least of his problems...

Tell that to all the scalpers who are killing it. Tom Baldwin from Market Wizards is a scalper, he turned his $25k into 1 mil in his first year, and thats been his approach since. Paul Rotter used to do 10% of the bund volumes and he was a scalper. There is money to be made on all time frames, with incredibly diverse approaches. Thats one of the main points of market wizards.

Wonder if he is done trading?

Given the turnover, it's not surprising that the same topics come up again and again and again. The only real difference between now and twenty years ago is the interest in forex, and given the characteristics of the population of beginning traders, this is not a surprise. And given that new traders are generally not prone to reading, much less study, it is neither a surprise that they don't bother to read old threads, nor even the beginning posts in current threads, nor even the posts prior to the ones to which they're responding, which is why they so often don't even know what the thread is about.

One can't expect his responses to these questions to register. They are more a form of entertainment. But there's always the possibility that something one says just might prompt the neophyte to begin to take this at least a bit more seriously.

Study and practice are the two things farthest removed from the minds of the majority.

-- Richard D. Wyckoff

He will be done once his money runs out. He told me he has health issues, and can't work and needs a "reliable income." I feel really sorry for the guy, because I know how the story will end...

That was purely discretionary trades. I don't mean to derail this thread, just pointing out it is entirely possible.

Mike