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I fully agree with that belief. I have referred to it as an 'inherent ability to read the markets' in some of my other posts on the subject. Problem is, all the successful traders who have that ability write posts that say it's easy, just do this, just trust your instincts, trust your gut, just feel the market, you can develop that skill etc. Newbies, see posts like that and think, cool I can do that, but quickly find out if they have that ability or not. Skill is not developed through repetition alone, it requries aptitude or genetic ability first. If I am clumsy and uncoordinated by nature, I will probably never become a professional ball room dancer, or professional basketball player. I think if you don't have that ability, you can spend 10,000 hours at the screen, you will never succeed at discretionary trading.
I know I don't have that aptitude as indicated by my failure as a discretionary trader. But once I switched my focus to strict ruled based mechanical trading, I instantly jumped the hurdle. Even now after being a full time rule based mechanical trader for 5 years, If I try to speculate, and predict the market, I still fail miserably. I think humans have the psychological need to feel responsible for their own fates, so we naturally have a bias to be discretionary, as that style of trading fulfills that need. I think anyone failing as a discretionary trader, should put aside the natural psychological bias towards discretionary, and look into the rule based mechanical approach (welcome to the dark side )
I would agree that there will always be a % of the population that may never make it at trading even if they had all the time in the world. That probably holds true for just about ANY activity though.
But actually, there are probably dozens of variables or reasons a trader won't make it, beyond just them not having the aptitude to do it. So some people might eventually chalk up their inability to read a chart to lacking the aptitude for it, but that person could also just have not been in the environment to foster that ability. So what is the real reason? Could be dozens of things?!?
I would think that MOST people could become discretionary traders given the proper motivation and enough time to figure it out. But I also believe that if an infinite number of monkeys were typing on keyboards for an infinite amount of time, they would eventually type a Shakespeare novel.
Yeah! Most discretionary traders would think they would be able to pick the Shakespearean monkey, and just as in the numbers in real life, 95% of them will be wrong. Me, as a statistical mechanical trader, I would say, I don't like those odds
Well, the odds of that event occurring for the monkey are INFINITESIMALLY small. We're talking gagillionths of a percent here.
You have the aptitude to be a discretionary trader, I'm certain of it. You simply found another way before you figured it out, and you have likely resigned to the fact that it's an impossibility for you.
Lawl, if I figured out my mechanical system, I'd probably give up the idea of discretionary trading all together, and I'd be like the guy that wrote "market wizards," and say I can't trade discretionary either. (He said he couldn't trade discretionary and that systems trading was the only thing that allowed him to trade successfully).
You might be right. One of the issue behind the high trader failure rate is that, by default the great majority of traders are discretionary traders, and whether I am right or wrong about needing to have the aptitude, the discretionary trading learning process tends to take most traders to the 'point of ruin' way before they can develop that skill. So maybe the reality is, most may just blow up their accounts before they had the chance to fine tune their discretionary skill.
Very perspicace observation. And of course, most will not spend the time required on a simulator to practice their discretionary trading skills. Trading on a simulator means no chance of making real money, and most traders start trading for the real money. Add to this documenting their discretionary trading in a rigourous way, and many newbies will give up.
I once read that this figure was based on the accounts closed within a specific time period, with a certain broker.
The problem with this is that within this population:
1) there a lot of people who don't take trading seriously and just play(gamble) with a very tiny account
2) there are also a lot of people who think they will be a millionaire in just 3 years
3) there are a lot of people who take a few trades and lose interest and close the account
So I think that when this investigation whas done among a popalution who was serious and dedicated to becoming a trader, the failure rate will be far less. Nevertheless, trading should be seen as a profession and is not easy.
This statistics also hold for "professional" traders. Few years ago, some US prop firms went
bankrupt, and all their financials were thus put out by the court.
People were surprised to see again this magical 95% failure rate.
This was a prop where people were trading full-time seriously.
I hope I am not crushing your illusions. Interestingly every joe believes he will not
be one of the 95%.
As a currency trader, like Lance Beggs, I found his method works better than Al Brook's on currency futures. However, since most of his charts in his book are from 2010, I'm a little concerned about its profitability in long term.