If some career is more satisfying than trading is a purely personal question. For me, the answer is a most resounding "no". I know of no other opportunity that can bring more personal and financial rewards. I know of no other business where one can ...

Isnt a service career more satisfying then trading?

"be larger when right, smaller when wrong". That's true, for the most part. (I haven't read the entire thread yet) This talk of a saddle point...I use something similar to my own risk management, if it in fact refers to what I think it does. First ...

Optimized Risk vs Reward Equation

If I'm understanding your post correctly...the only optimal point would be by an incidental repeat of the same or qualitatively better "conditions" that caused the initial entry. That can occur at any time, or it may not occur at all. However, each ...

Optimized Risk vs Reward Equation

Absolutely correct, imo.

Optimized Risk vs Reward Equation

Energy drinks, coffee and loud music.

Sleeping and Trading

2 years for me. I got my start by accident, in 1998. It was my senior year in high school then and for one of my classes the teacher entered all of her students (across 6 periods), around 150 students in a ten week trading contest. We weren't given ...

How long to be profitable?

Well, who knows exactly who's running what. I'm not saying programmed trading can never be profitable. I think it can be profitable under certain circumstances. For instance, let's just say you have programmed a simple crossover signal through some ...

Inescapable Truths

I guess I did get a little overheated for no reason. My apologies. Anyway with respect to randomness, in the markets it's not like a simple coin flip. Power laws come into play. Price clustering takes place because of the scale invariance market ...

Inescapable Truths

Hmmm, now you have my curiosity piqued. Earlier you wrote: "Completely wrong, there is nothing subjective about an edge, anything else is gambling." Then you go ahead and put up a chart of a random walk. Just what point are you trying to prove, if ...

Inescapable Truths

You'd like me to take a wild guess at direction based upon some cherry-picked example of close prices? You must think me a fool! Anyway, I don't trade like that. I don't really care what will happen next. I don't make my trading decisions based upon ...

Inescapable Truths

Craig, if you were referring to trends and momentum, I do think momentum can and DOES provide an edge (there clearly exists price dependency in the market)...what I was saying is that I don't think the edge that it provides can be calculated ...

Inescapable Truths

Ok, then I challenge you to provide proof, over 1,000 runs in real-time of something that works without subjective judgement involved. Or at least provide proof of something that gives you a "historical expectation". How can price give you some ...

Inescapable Truths

How exactly are you quantifying an "edge"? In the long run, given enough data and enough sample tries through the data, the only edge you can give yourself is through subjective judgement. If there was any inherent edge to be had from OBJECTIVE ...

Inescapable Truths

Here's a truth that I've discovered from experience. No amount of hedging or scaling in and out of positions will give you any kind of inherent edge. You can't circumvent the need for good timing with these methods. At the end of the day you need to ...

Inescapable Truths

Yes, I completely agree here. Elements of subjectivity and judgment are required for determining not only what direction to favor, but also where to enter and exit, and how to protect profits during the open position. It's a game of approximates. If ...

Inescapable Truths

You're not taking into account the fractal nature of the market. Prices don't follow a typical bell curve distribution. Markets have a "memory". And because they have a memory, continuation is more likely than change. Most changes are not small. ...

Inescapable Truths

Chart patterns "fail" or "succeed" for the same reason trends begin or end...namely the unpredictable interactions of a multitude of different trends of various length and size. The only thing that's knowable is the current price in relation to an ...

Why a chart pattern fails?

Best Place to Trade From — Great thread, but why does one of your requirements have to be "inexpensive living"? If you're a good trader, that seems like a non-issue. Personally I live in southern California, and while it's beautiful here, I'm ...

Best place in the world to trade from?

Advice — Keep a journal, and maintain long term and short term goals, and do periodic honest reviews of how you're doing, what you did well, what you did poorly, how how you can improve. Also, I'd say read a lot. Figure out what the markets ...

any full time traders here?

Down Time — I trade the smaller time frames, so when I'm actually engaged in trading I simply focus on trading and ignore distractions, like surfing the web. I just try to get in tune with market time and lose track of clock time. When I sit ...

Dilemma - what to do with your free time?