Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
But be sure you've read all this guys posts like I have (not just the ones in this thread). My reply is a defense against what he posted and what he is saying about the site. If you look at my other replies to him, I have tried to give him helpful info but there is only so much I am willing to do for someone who doesn't respect the community we've all built together.
I believe that it is right for the original poster to feel at a disadvantage.
There is a tremendous “cost” involved in tipping the scales in your favour, (to even stand a chance of being profitable). It might take you a year to years before this price is payed. I have heard many traders say that it is the hardest thing they have done.
So my advice would be to calculate the cost and calculate it well.
By “cost” I will quickly list some that come to mind.
-- Mental
You will have to study and learn extremely hard. You need the head knowledge to form a foundation to give context. For example, I feel that I studied much harder to learn about trading than doing a 4 year university course. The, breath and depth of this vast subject of trading is so much more involved than you might see the need for. Example, money management (hours of learning). Hours and hours of screen time.
-- Psychological
You need to learn to do what you do not want to do. Take trades when you don't feel like it. You need to learn to stay out of trades when you feel like taking them. You need to deal with crushing losses. And you need to handle success well.
-- Physical
Life circumstances (health, finances, time, commitments, friends, family, etc.)
I write this mainly because, I certainly had no ideal how little I knew about trading.
Kosher, IMHO some people expectations of investing and trading are just unrealistic. Investing and trading should be view more long-term approach. Is possible to beat the the return of the S&P over 1 year or 10 year period? Yes I know so for a fact. Is possible to double your money every year trading futures everyday? Kinda of unrealistic to me.
haha yeah, maybe I over shot that one. It would be a great idea if it was scalable. What I mean is if there was a chance people going to the website could make money from the prospect of not trading directly. The problem is that people will always favor a way to make money over a way to save money, it's just human nature, it's excitement.. call it what you will. Another problem I didn't take note of is that there is virtually no way to target an audience of novice traders unless you advertise on a trading forum which is virtually a contradiction. If you went to a trading conference with this type of strategy you'd obviously have a crowd of opposition from a few traders who have made money or people who know people who have made money. You know for every trader who makes money there are one hundred people who know him and can claim it's possible to make money. So I guess we'll scratch that idea ha
R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
Please visit this thread for more information.
I visit futures.io (formerly BMT) almost every day. I rarely post as most of the time I don't feel qualified to give an answer. But I have some input I'd like to put out there for Kosher or anyone else who is struggling, or skeptical.
There's been mention on this thread about how easy/hard/impossible it is to make a Career out of day trading. I submit that is the wrong outlook to have. Careers are for Doctors, or Lawyers, Dentists, Salesmen, and IT Professionals, even Politicians and Civil Servants. There's a key difference between the above and you as a day trader. Those with Careers Produce. They Practice. They Work to earn money. As a trader, you don't Earn. You aren't paid by another to Provide a service or a good. Any Career you think you have as a trader is illusory and false.
What we do as day traders is invest with really short time frames. When we put on a trade it is with expectation that we get a return on our risk, our investment (even if that investment only lasts 5 minutes). And when you put in time every day pulling the trigger on your trades, it's philosophically no different than the man who spends his hours every day researching, monitoring and shifting his investments. Ultimately, your pay comes from your account and the risk you put it through.
I don't want to get bogged down in semantics, or an argument on the difference between investing and trading. I would say it's the difference between fly fishing and bait fishing. Ultimately, it's not farming. It's not the same as running a business, or having a job. It's not a Career.
Think of the classic Gordon Gekko type, or the Robber Barons of the Industrial Revolution, or go back further to the time of Kings and Nobles. Their outlook is not about how their Career is doing. It's how their Wealth is doing. How their Kingdom is faring. And when you fire up your trading platform on your retail account and you try to trade the markets, on a teeny tiny scale, you are JP Morgan, or Mayer Rothschild, or Giovanni Medici. You hold your Fortune in the palm of your hand. No one is going to pay you. You are touching a different world when you trade. A different way of life. Don't confuse it and limit it by the trappings of our Career oriented society.
Rhetorical question: Would you still day trade every morning if you had 1 Million in the bank? 10 Million? 20 Million?
The answer to the above illustrates why we need to avoid the "Career" mentality. Yes, day trading appears a lot like a Job/Career. You get up every morning. You put your time in watching every tick of the market. You do research at night, bookkeeping, etc. It is Work. But there's no Career in it. Because once you become successful day trading, you attain the Capital to start swing trading. Once you become successful swing trading, you attain the Capital to start really investing BIG. Then you become the Tycoon, the Fund Manager, the Lord of Finance, whatever you want to call it. You hire your analysts who will Work for you. You will provide them with the opportunity to have a great Career (as your employees). You'll find a few partners who you can bounce ideas from. And you'll position your Wealth how you think it will best get returns. And then you'll live your life while coordinating it all. That's the end result. That's the summit. And if you want to stop before then because you have enough money to be comfortable, you'll do that instead. But I think that's why you don't hear about too many successful day traders who have stuck with it. Because when you trade, you are really taking that "first step in to a larger world."
Very well said. You should post more often your nonconformal thought. It's clear to me to problem the person is trying to solve comes from his way at looking at it,i.e., "in the box". Ever heard about the famous puzzle in which someone is asked to interconnect nine dots in a three-by-three grid by using four straight lines drawn without the pencil leaving the paper?
In order to be successful, the puzzle solver has to realize that the boundries of the dot array are psychological. The only way to solve the puzzle is to extend the lines beyond the artificial boundry created by the nine dots. The term "in the box" is sometimes used to describe conformal thinking.
Mike, are you saying my "Why Elite?" thread was disrespectful to the community for questioning why certain threads are pay-to-view?
And as for me being a rookie, I've been swing and day trading for two years. It took Al Brooks ten years to become profitable. Please link some threads demonstrating your skills and knowledge, preferably in day trading futures, since that is this site's main focus. That would be very informative for all the rookies reading this.
And my factual comments about day trading not being a financially sustainable endeavor for most traders are just that, factual, and have nothing to do with my skills or experience as a trader (ad hominem)
I have not read all your threads and posts, but I've read a decent amount of them, and IMHO, Mike is correct. You have been combatative from the getgo, and at times just outright obnoxious. A few examples:
1. You are having trouble making money at trading and therefore declare in general that it is "The End Of DayTrading".
2. You come up with a figure that 1 in 1000 traders makes money consistently and act as though it is a fact. I'm not saying its easy to make money day-trading, I think it is not, but absent a serious study, declaring percentages out of thin air and acting as though they are fact is annoying.
3. You look for a free trading platform, choose OpenECry, equate it with NinjaTrader and Kinetick without doing much serious research, and then declare that most people who go for NinjaTrader and Kinetick are just suckers for the marketing, which is basically just insulting them.
Some of the things you say may be true, but your way of saying them, and your attitude, sucks.
R.I.P. Roy Goldberg (srgtroy), 1965-2023.
Please visit [url="https://nexusfi.com/off-topic/60226-srgtroy-r-i-p-brotha.html[/url] for more information.
You're taking a much more hostile attitude than I ever have on these forums, that comes off very hypocritical. The marketing and naming of trading products does (sub)consciously influence consumers, that's more of an observation, you're projecting from your own negativity beyond that.
IMO a lot of trading products are very expensive considering most traders are probably losing when they turn to the more advanced or attractive products and they rarely have an opportunity to try them out fully. For example, I had to navigate through several pages on Ninjatrader's website before learning that the "Free" version does not offer live trading.
My guess, whether it's 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 100,000 day traders who sustain profitability is just a guess, to illustrate how much extremely difficult day trading is, whether one is a rookie or a veteran trader who can't adapt to changing markets and institutional tactics. There is a lot of reason to believe this is extremely challenging for most discretionary traders and that the challenge will increase in the future. My lack of profitability isn't relevant to that. Let's hear more of the different opinions within the community, I could be wrong.