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I think this has been discussed before but i think this question is a moving target. Things are always changing in technology which changes whether trading can be profitable.
I personally have never been consistently profitable in about 8 years of trading. I have only come across 2 people who were consistently profitable. I was in a currency trading room for a few months. Hundreds of people went through there and nobody ever made any money. the guy who ran the room made money day in and day out. He was scalping the currencies on his keyboard. He was very experienced and could do it - I watched him do it on a regular basis.
There is another guy i know who is a daytrader in my town. I had him manage some of my money and i watched his trades real time on my computer. He also consistently made money scalping th S&P's.
They both traded discretionarily and and not automated.
How about yourself ?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
yes, i do agree that 90% of traders consistently lose. but what does that say about people like tim sykes or superman or fous alerts or inpennystock? how do they win and make so much profit? are they scams? i dont think so. i think they instead have a set of strategies and rules in place that they capitalize on and stick to which allows them to make profits. superman always says that his goal is to "maximize his gains and minimize his losses"
There are various ways to trade. I can say this about Tim Sykes. I tried his newsletter from WIA about a few years ago. The calls were mostly losers. After a few months I had to push for the return policy which I had to catch in a 1 week window. It was extremely difficult but I finally got my refund but it didn't help my losses only the initial 2k fee.
Now I think if Sykes and others like him were so good, they would be already only selling their services at a minimum of 20k to big money funds and managers. yet I see Sykes and others continually on multiple retail oriented affiliates. Sykes is even a sponsor on "investimonials" and always featured. I saw his half baked videos during my subscription. Very disappointing. You get far more insight on futures.io (formerly BMT). If you weren't aware of it, it's called "pump and dump". Except Sykes has also been known to short the other way. Anyways if one reads the myriad complaints about Sykes and the like, it fits the pump and dump schema of that type of vendor segment. I know some of the futures.io (formerly BMT) community may be insulated from awareness of all those shenanigans out there, then I suggest paying a visit to elitetrader.com and type in the search for any vendor you have a question about, and you can quickly see the disgruntled client sentiment bare-bones in your visit!
It's difficult for sure not as easy as some trade gurus / trading room owners / magic indicators sellers would all make out. However it's definitely doable. My percentages account for comms/fees so as much that overall transactions at sum zero, consistent profitability is a reality. I'm profitable as are many around that have dedicated themselves to this business and the approach I took is simple and I'll share it here. I had given myself 6 months whilst I was working last yr to turn a profit equal or greater than my day job. In that time I challenged myself to give it my all in reading, studying and time to see if given my full efforts what was possible and I made and lost money but learnt it's something I personally can do consistently although a certainly steep learning curve not suited to all.
Also certainly the only guaranteed way to make money is to broker transactions, be an intermediary, or vendor in another capacity as many traders have gone on to do. Personally I'm still learning and a ways off from such things myself.
Congrats on being able to accomplish such a lofty goal in such a short time period. For many people, that 6 months turns into years and years (speaking from personal experience)...
Thanks Kevin, but I have perhaps not been clear. I mean that earning more than my day job is the financial freedom I wanted to prove I was capable of and my journey to date has opened my eyes over these 6-8months to the fact that I'm definitely capable of it if I can end up doing it full time. Certainly I'm not all the way there especially as I'm busy with family life and a day job. I definitely respect that it's a long journey and that it's one I will spend years advancing my knowledge in and learning from pro's like yourself and others on futures.io (formerly BMT), thats having gone this far on this journey including demo trading on probably what's been two yrs to now and 10 yrs in banking before then. So definitely not 6months only :-)
Although I saw a YouTube vid this morning of a 14 yr old trader using footprints and value trading! Awesome but even that lad was trading since he was 10!
I'd echo what you say it takes yrs of effort in preparation if not in application with definitely no short cuts.