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Pretty defensive and unecessary response - adds to my intrigue. I dont doubt there are some long term profitable traders or that long term profitbility is possible for me...Sure I would have liked my own trajectory to be faster than it has been but that isnt the point of my comment. Disagree that it is a 'destructive behaviour' - I understand that you have a long history in trading including in the 'pit'? Did you never wonder about the profitability of your peers? Did you never seek out any evidence anecdotal or otherwise about the kind of profitbaility that successful others had achieved?
I think some people on this thread need to make a distinction between traders trying to sell you some training and profitable traders who have no desire to either train you or publish their private financial records just so that a few strangers can be encouraged to keep looking to others for their own trading success.
It's really quite simple - the clever ones have already worked out how useful the thousands they spent on training really is. You answered your own questions. If you want a thread about how those sellers never proved anything then feel free but don't include the other type of traders I mentioned.
And the bottom line is this. It is possible to be a consistently profitable private retail trader. But no one is likely to prove it to you. If you believe it, then carry on, you don't need proof. If you don't, then really, why don't you give up now? Your attitude is all wrong. It's all about yourself, not others. Sorry to sound so harsh, but honestly, you'd be happier in the long run doing something else and giving up on trading if your whole thing is to keep harping on about people proving it to you.
I could care less what the guy next to me was making - I only cared about what I was making and how I was trading. It was considered presumptuous to ask another trader what he made, whether it was for the day, the week, the month, or the year. If you did he would just answer, "I had a good day", or "At least I got my health", but actual amounts were rarely discussed. It's nobody's business.
Of course...good news travels fast, bad news travels even faster. Very much a locker room mentality, but nevertheless P&Ls were a relatively, closely guarded secret. It was usually traders' clerks or clearing firm employees that leaked the info, not the traders themselves.
Thanks
It seems to me then that you developed as a trader in an environment where you felt, saw and heard ( ie not just on a screen) about the real stories of how other traders were going? You probably had some rumour quality information and other info that you trusted the sources of that was much better than rumour. Of course the most important thing is how you were trading BUT I would argue that that kind of contextual information assisted with you with your goal setting and helped with sustaining motivation. It also provided you with pretty clear ( good enough for you) evidence that some traders were very successful - yes?
The modern day retail trader gets the vast majority of info on line via 'anonymous' others. There is a difference in the level of information here. It could be argued that the modern retail trader must sustain a higher level of faith because of the fact that a lot of online info cant be verified and I dont think anyone would dispute that there are enough dodgy claims made out there.
So I think these 'requests' for 'proof' are coming from that place in the retail traders psyche that would like to not rely quite so much on faith especially while in the early stages of development.
You and others argue it is a fruitless and even destructive quest to see the proof of another retail traders profitability - that may be the case - but I think the sentiment is easy enough to understand.
Daytraders are an overly optimistic crowd and grossly undercapitalized. They believe in the marketing pitch of the NY Lottery--"All it takes is a dollar and a dream." I think the odds of winning for both groups are the same. The difference is the Lottery players don't get sucked into books, webinars, schools, forums, trading rooms, systems and indicators. At the end of their lives, Lottery players probably less than traders.
Rumors weren't necessary, I had friends that flew their own Cessna Citations and had 8 figure years. But being there, cuts both ways. I was standing next to Tom Baldwin when he dropped $10MM in 60 seconds, and witnessed 95% of the people that walked into the CBOT and CME, walk right back out, after having lost their life savings. In the final analysis, neither scenario was a realistic option for me. I was neither well capitalized enough, nor risk tolerant enough, to achieve the former status, and unwilling to accept the latter. So whatever motivated me came from within, irrespective of any outside influence.
BTW: I think Xeno couldn't have put it any better, than he did - so over and out on this topic.