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Yes, I was referring to adding contracts. Whether you or I or both can do this or not is not a comment on its complexity, compared, as I mentioned, to scholarship.
BTW, thinking it is difficult proves the thought correct.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Some jump from one thing to another in trading and learn and others don't become successful. I don't believe the jumping by itself is sufficient to isolate as the cause of whether someone grows into the trader they want to be.
Personally, I think the most difficult aspect of trading is patience. You could teach a child to identify a high probability setup on any timeframe with any bar and any indicator or none at all. The challenge is patiently waiting for that setup to emerge. Anyone who is genuinely patient has the disposition to become a good trader.
The fact that some of the smartest academics like doctors and engineers are often absolute failures at trading should highlight an obvious conclusion--trading requires a different set of skills than can be found in an academic pursuit. To say "trading is not as hard as medicine" overlooks this fact. Medicine perhaps requires more innate intelligence, more long-term commitment to the time it takes to reach the goal, and more training in order to practice it. But that does not mean it's easier. A far larger percentage of those who attend medical school complete it and practice, versus those who open trading accounts and grow them.
I wholly agree with the logic of giving power to a thought, and that thinking something is difficult usually makes it more so, because the thought is there. But when it comes to adding contracts and the supposed lack of difficulty you speak of, it is clear that you are approaching this from the land of the theoretical. It should be easy to simply increase the size, theoretically, but this does not take into account the complexities of the human psychology and the emotions that are triggered when one increases his size. A tightrope walker does not go from walking 2 feet off the ground to 200 feet off the ground in one day--I would suppose that he steadily goes higher and gains comfort with each new height. In the same way, psychologically it's more conceivable to go from 1 to 2, then 3, etc.; yet, some delude themselves into thinking it's as easy as going from 5 to 50, and then they try it, and always discover that it's not as straightforward as it looked on paper, written on their $5K to $100K in a year plan.
We all have things we are working on, and for some their #1 at the moment may be patience.
But it is again living in the land of theoretical and hypothesis if you really think you can teach a child (I'm thinking young child like 8 to 10 who has not yet developed firm cognitive reasoning) to trade. You can teach them to identify a pattern on a chart and see a line cross another, but that's again the fallacy of thinking how "simple" trading is--"it's so easy you can teach a child to do it, now all you need is mental discipline."
Patience is absolutely part of the game, but it's a part that must be accompanied by an understanding of how markets work and how to profit from them. The "find a setup and wait for it" approach sounds good in theory but is usually purveyed by the lazy and by those selling something to the lazy.
If you disagree with me, I understand. Prove me wrong. Find a kid and show me they can make money. Hell, just make money yourself using this approach. It will quickly become clear that there is too much context lacking and not understood for a "plug and play" approach to trading.
I think what separates successful traders from wannabes who spend thousands hours pontificating in chat rooms is a function of the fire which burns in the belly, not the mass of gray matter sitting in the skull.....
Trading: Equities, index options and futures options
Posts: 192 since Apr 2010
Thanks Given: 67
Thanks Received: 203
In medicine if you make a mistake the normal punishment, if you're caught, is to face the Morbidity and Mortality committee and get your wrist slapped. Only the most egregious errors lead to serious consequences. Trading mistakes however, almost always lead to loss of money.