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Traders with 5-10 years of experience but still not profitable
^Understandable and I don't want to 'fight' with you, but there are people I know who had actually opened their own LLC with Ninjatrader after being successful in this business and after starting to trade retail from 1 lot. So it's not like because only the 'top notch' achieved this much and that much, no one else can more than them.
Although extremely difficult, nothing is impossible in this entire universe to achieve. (Yes we will build that time machine one day.)
Said this a million times before:
IF there exists an intelligent civilization a billion light years away, just because you don't know, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Nothing is impossible, but if you look at what @xsamanthax has said, you hopefully agree this person needs a dose of reality:
It's either world changing money or I'm going to do something else.
trying to strike it rich
what will make me either filthy rich
I want to make money. Lots of it
I need to gain a certain amount of power/influence/money
making consistent, sizeable gains and scaling up
It's either millions or bust
I have seen many people over the years with this mindset start trading to get rich quick. Heck, I thought this way at one time, too.
But the reality of trading profits is usually wildly different than the dream for almost everyone, including professionals.
I hate to be the one to throw the bucket of cold water - especially since I firmly believe people CAN be successful at trading. But going into it with realistic expectations is a major part of ultimate success.
I would normally want to be encouraging to someone attempting to succeed at anything, including trading, and what I am about to write here is not at all meant to discourage, just to convey the truth, or something close to it. So take it in that spirit.
Trading is not, ever, a good way to get rich in a hurry. For most who try it, it is not a way to get rich, or indeed to make any money, at all. Somehow the idea seems to have gotten your attention that it is otherwise. I want to disabuse you of that notion.
I like this forum a lot, obviously, but what you are looking for will not be found here, or anywhere. For the most part, people who post here do not claim that it is.
So, to save you some time:
- Trading, and learning it, is a grind. There are no secrets that are worth anything, and there are no special techniques that give you the Answer. Once you get past the desire to be told how to do it quickly, this unwelcome truth starts to sink in. Many initially optimistic beginning traders just fade away, at least from here, as they discover this.
- It's not that "you get it or you don't." Getting it is sort of easy: buy when most others who are going to buy haven't done it yet. Sell when they have, and before the other sellers sell out first. You can learn things that matter from charts and from various tools that may help you understand about the shifting balance of buying and selling, and some of these will be useful to different people, depending on their use of them. But once you have gotten that far, you have just made it to the beginning.
- Everyone else who is in the markets, and who had the minuscule patience to get that far, also knows everything you know at that point. And, they have done it longer than you. This is why it is often emphasized that the markets are "competitive." So is any other business (which trading is, by the way.) For example, how hard could it be to open a successful pizza joint, right? Nothing to it -- just put the pizza in the oven and take it out. Yet the overwhelming majority of new businesses, in any line of business, fail. This is because they have to succeed against the competition, which is not going to just lie down and let them take their profits from them. Trading is a business and a skill, and it is done in competition with other traders who don't want to give up their profits to you. It's that simple.
- In addition to all this, the most important thing and the most difficult thing for a trader is to find a way to overcome his/her own natural impulses, when they have real money on the line and they are excited by the chance of profit or dismayed by the prospect of loss, and the market doesn't go their way. How to act objectively, correctly, and quickly is where the largest hurdles are encountered. This can be learned, and people do, sometimes, but it is the hardest part of it. There is no book, or course, or any other type of information that will lead you to the emotional control in the face of risk that you need in order to trade well and consistently. There are people and resources that can help, as this forum might be of help to some, but it is something that the would-be trader has to develop on their own. And it takes time and self-awareness -- and frankly, losing some money and learning from that -- before it starts to happen.
All of this is why it's a grind.
So I don't think that trading is good for what you want. It is not fast, it is not easy, you have to know things and you have to work at it, generally a long time.
I don't know anything else that is a good way to get rich fast either, but trading really and truly is not.
So why does anyone bother? After the initial wild burst of enthusiasm that people have when they first see the potential, it's simply that the potential is there, and that people who work at it do -- sometimes -- make it work for themselves. So it can be done. Not quickly, though, and not easily.
We try to help people here, so both the pros and the cons need to be understood.
See if it speaks to you, is the best advice I can give. Then see if the time and the work is something you are willing to put in, knowing that the odds do not favor success, but deciding to just do it anyway because you just like it and you want to, if you do. Or go on to something that suits you better, if you don't.
Every successful trader I have known or interacted with on this forum took years to get there. Let this be some context for you.
Good luck, whatever you find out and however you decide. Everyone should eventually do things that are right for them, and it may take time to figure out what they are.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Well put @bobwest. I am going to support this with my own experience.
I started out in 2009 and took 2 years to get a decent understanding of what I am most comfortable trading - which markets, what kind of analysis, timeframe, position size etc.
I was well funded and I knew that was required. Spent most of my savings over the next 3 years trying to make money but I could not because of one and only one reason - I could not follow my own plan.
Almost ready to quit, I got lucky. I got hired at a trading firm because they liked what I had done and understood why I was failing.
Struggled again for 2-3 years, again because of my inability to follow a plan. Luckily, I didnt lose any money for the firm and kept my job.
In 2017, I finally made enough to prove that the system works and I can trade it. But the struggle did not end there. I was trading small compared to my peers and I had to step up and trade bigger.
This is my 13th year after I first started out and I am still struggling.
Covid, the war... these events have never occurred before and my backtests never saw this kind of data. By the time you realize its time to get on the sidelines, you have taken a serious hit.
While my risk appetite has increased significantly over the years, I still struggle with the amount of risk I carry. Cant sleep some nights.
I still deviate from my trading systems, sometimes trade against and its always a bad decision.
I have struggled with timely availability and accuracy of my data, switched vendors 3 times and every time I had to do that, its a massive effort re-writing all the code to the new API.
IT issues, navigating corporate policies to get what I need to be able to do my job - yeah, that happened, many times.
There's always something or the other.
This is not an easy job, let me confirm that. It is one of the most difficult jobs in the world but it does get easier with time. Time is the biggest investment you need to have a chance at succeeding.
Part of the problem is just defining what is successful. My idea of successful is 5 or more years of trading with a sharpe ratio above .5. I do not hit those metrics, and you aren't going to find very many people doing that at a retail level. If they were really accomplishing this they'd probably have started a fund by now.
But the darker reality is that retail trading just isn't all that viable for most people. We hear stories of successful traders, but most of that comes from a different era before the robots came. There seems to be this idea out there that a retail trader just has to stick with it long enough. That's just not the reality. To make money you have to be able to predict future orders. That's crazy hard to do with the limited resources of a retail trader. The odds are still stacked against you even if you have everything you need.
Totally agree. 15 years ago, I was developing software at a hedge fund. I saw fresh college graduates start out by working as analysts for traders. They would work long hours, do tedious analysis in excel, VBA, matlab for traders. None of them saved a dime, you could find most of them at bars and strip clubs after hours but they would be back at work bright and early every day. Most of their analysis would get thrown out but they would learn the markets, from real traders and eventually get to trade their own strategy and graduate to have their own book. For most, this took 3-5 years. These guys struggled the least on their path to becoming traders.
Its the same thing at the firm I work for now. Every year, we hire 2 analysts and after 2-3 years working in various back office areas, they are assigned to a commercial desk. Some become full-time traders, others take up less stressful roles. I am so jealous of these guys. Compared to them, my struggle has been monumental. But the truth is, without the support and backing of a trading firm, it is extremely difficult to make it as an independent trader.
Let's be honest, what do they have that you, I, and others don't have? TEACHERS. But what do teachers do? They give you the information YOU NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL. It's all about the proper information. I think it pays to be around other successful people because they're a source of actual knowledge. Most people on forums are completely full of crap (I promised the mod I won't swear anymore), and let's not get started on the nonsense the brokers and "educators" are spitting out.
We are literally a few pages of solid, useful material away from being insanely profitable. If you're determined you can figure it out yourself. If you're intelligent you can figure it out faster. If you're lucky enough to have the information dumped in your lap because you work with other successful people... well then intelligence has little to do with it. You're going to be taught how to succeed.
Let's be honest. Most people fail because they aren't thinkers. They are hopers, dreamers, and feelers. Most people aren't that bright.
Look at COVID. People can't even wear a mask, and when they do wear a mask they can't even wear it properly. Like, seriously, wtf? If Johnny the Cashier at Home Depot, who can't even wear his mask properly, opens a brokerage account and tries to trade, what do you think is going to happen? He's going to blow his account because he can't even understand what percentages are. This is the kind of crap that litters the "retail trader" label. People like this. People that think the second coming of Christ is right around the corner.
There is a different breed of animal. Someone who WANTS it and will stop at nothing to get it. That person is me. If I means that I have to stop doing research, stop looking at charts, and go work at an investment bank, then that's what it'll have to be, but I won't stop until I'm in a position where I succeed.
