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)
is Merritt Black really a consistently profitable trader
I saw this interview where het told about his rough patch last summer
Or is he to be considered more as a label from SMB Capital to plug themselves in the market
Experienced, he is. but I see his name regularly around aspiring traders as their inspiration, the successful marketing of him as a brand kind of makes me question his abilities.
Difficult to distinguish the real ones from the scammers, there is a kind of conflict of interest being at these firms that also sell education like SMB, AXIA etc.
To Merritt's credit, I will say this: SMB offered a 1 hour coaching special one year, and it was right when Merritt was starting to develop the Futures desk. You don't get to do that with SMB unless you're extraordinary in a lot of ways. I was lucky to have a great conversation with him, and he offered a couple tools to help build good habits, which I have found helpful. Consequently, he opened the SMB Futures chat room to anyone who wanted to join, and I was a member for over a year. Since then, he has cultivated a successful group of traders that are most aligned with his methods and philosophy, and it became private. I don't use market profile as he does, so I chose not to continue at that point. However, during the year I was in the chat room, I observed Merritt's attitude and performance. He is a no nonsense leader, and operated the chat room with strict guidelines and rules congruent with developing serious traders. Merritt is very clear on his strategy, executes flawlessly without hesitation, and manages his trades appropriately. However, what makes him one of the best traders I've known is his mindset mastery - he's extraordinarily disciplined. A lot of things can contribute to a rough patch, but if anyone can come out on the other side of one, it would be Merritt. Of course this is just MY experience, but the key word is experience. Others may have a different opinion, which is what makes us all so valuable to one another.
Before joining here I knew I was new but felt that the education I had received was adequate. After seeing all of these posts it is eye opening just how much I have to learn. Thanks!
I believe there are 3 groups of traders concerning risk:
Group 1: "Risk Seeking" This is the category I am in. I have no issues pulling the trigger to get into a trade. I've had a habit of over-trading and I used to be an 'occasional revenge-trader'. When I would get into revenge-trader-mode I would ignore my risk-per-trade and risk-per-day limits. This was extremely destructive and I have blown up a lot of account due to this tendency and its repercussions. (example: trading well for 2-3 weeks and making nice profits, then one day making mistakes leading to risking too much and losing, then trying to get it back and blowing 1/3 to 1/2 the account in one day. The next day feeling really bad about it and throwing the risk plan out the window usually leading to more losses and bad feelings)
Group 2: "Risk Averse" This type of trader errs on the side of caution and hesitates to enter trades or talks themself out of trades, only to often see those missed trades go to their profit targets without being on board. This trader could also trade too small so they don't ever make much gains.
Group 3: "Oscillators" This type of trader flips between 'Group 1 tendencies' and 'Group 2 tendencies'. They may start out in 'Group 1' and then after getting their rear handed to them one too many times flip to 'Group 2', then get bored of it and flip back to Group 1 only to repeat the cycle.
Let me know if you can relate to this and if you're in the Group 2 camp, share more about what this is like.
Advice for 'Group 1ers':
Get a broker that allows you to set a max daily risk (either in $ or %) and then after reaching that limit any positions you have will be liquidated and you will be locked out until the next trading day. This can keep you in the game if you get into revenge-trading-mode, allowing you time to cool down and get your head straight. This one simple thing would have avoided me a ton of pain in the past..
Some futures brokers that offer Rithmic have this functionality available.
(If you are the type to benefit from this feature make sure its not the kind where you can just easily login to your account and flip a switch to start trading again.)
For Certain Types of People (me? No-no. Couldn't possibly be talking about me!), this is about the worst approach there is - because my reaction would be to chafe under the restriction, even though it's self-imposed, and try to "cheat" around it.
What works - hard as it may be - is to actually fix the root problem; i.e., handle the emotional mess that causes under/over-trading, fear of risk, wild-ass gambling/YOLO bets, etc. If you don't handle that, no stop-gap measure will help - and you WILL wreck your account. But hey, if trading was easy, everybody would do it...