Tell the truth.Who does/doesnt make consistent trading profits.R U even a net winner?

[everyonerich]

Yes, CLOSED POSITIONS. This guy doesn't hold anything for long. He is a scalper by definition. He is extremely disciplined. A few ticks against him and he will get out where he can. I don't know how big his intraday drawdowns are but obviously not so big that he can't finish the day positive. For three years on the strech that is consistency.

if few ticks against him, u said he close? isnt that means closed with loss? but 3 years consistent is really mean something

i also can trade with 100% profit, but will have large drawdown.. before closing.. lol

 

[JTrader]

that's why i mentioned grey1. He calls out live trades on a daily basis. He's even implementing something where you can actually see his screen and his automated system trading his live account. He doesn't charge a cent because he makes money fron trading.

As for people like spanish. He 'could' be lying. He provide screenshots of an apparent;y live account, but i guess they could be photoshoppped etc. There's not many ways of proving / disproving really. I personally think he is making the money he claims to

great 3 cheers fr spamish.

but he is not here, so lets not get sidetracked ...

 

[BSD]

This is a very pessimistic post.

I will come forward and say that I AM consistently profitable.

There is no real way to prove this to you. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Right now I am having a difficult time and seeing a lot of gains on trades get wiped out by the churning in the markets.

Still, I consistently make more than I lose and as I have said, this is at a time which I consider, for me, to be one of the hardest that I have come across since I started out.

I used to think that gaining consistency was almost impossible until I joined my firm and I see traders that do it day in and day out. We've got one trader that hasn't had a down day in three years. What I have just written is not an exaggeration. This guy scalps the market each and every day and has not had a single down day in three years.

A few others that joined at around the same time as me (and that, unlike me, had NEVER traded before) spent six months on the sim and then went live six months back and have been taking between £500 - £3,000 on average, per day out of the markets, since then.

The consistency I have seen, first hand, in some traders, is nothing short of remarkable.

It can be done and it is done by many people.

Well said Tom.

J, have you thought about joining a prop firm, or having a look at what Grey does with pretty good consistency through going for singles, not homeruns in his daytrading.

Never give up on what you really want, provided this really IS what you want.

Have a look here:

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/first-steps/46620-10-startup-commandments.html

 

[Jack o'Clubs]

JT - obviously trading isn't easy and obviously you're having a tough time of it, but you do seem to have a pretty negative view of trading (scanning your recent posts) - but does this end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for you? If you go into every trade with the mindset that more people lose than win, and that maybe actually no-one wins outside the employed pros, then its not surprising you're having a difficult time - actually why are you still doing it after all this time with little obvious success? Without in any way wishing to prejudge, isn't it a bit like saying 'I can't make it as a professional athlete, therefore I don't believe anyone can', when the issue is ultimately one about your own abilities?

 

[Hoggums]

if spanish89 can make a grand per day, maybe there's hope for all of us...

He makes a grand a day for a couple of days and trickles in a few hundred for 2 weeks then loses 80% of profit in 2 days. Repeat ad infinitum.

 

[UKtradergirl]

I make money! But i'm a long way from being consistent. To get that one nailed would be heaven.

 

[JTrader]

JT - obviously trading isn't easy and obviously you're having a tough time of it, but you do seem to have a pretty negative view of trading (scanning your recent posts) - but does this end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for you? If you go into every trade with the mindset that more people lose than win, and that maybe actually no-one wins outside the employed pros, then its not surprising you're having a difficult time - actually why are you still doing it after all this time with little obvious success? Without in any way wishing to prejudge, isn't it a bit like saying 'I can't make it as a professional athlete, therefore I don't believe anyone can', when the issue is ultimately one about your own abilities?

Thanks. good points. some r probably true.

This discussion isn't about me though.

I have however volunteered honest information in order to facilitate the flow of the discussion.

But this isn't some sort of a cry for help thread

 

[Hoggums]

I am profitable, but not consistently - so - no. I used to have 3-4 great weeks and then a corker of a bad week which would set me back to where I was to start with - the only reason I didn't go lower was me deciding to stop trading.

Nowadays that corker of a week is just a bad week and getting less bad all the time. I lost money last week - but only a small amount compared to the previous weeks gains. I've completely sat out the market this morning - which a year ago I would have probably tried to trade - and lost.

I think you can be consistent provided you take a sample of enough trades. I'm sure TD's consistent guy has had a string of losers - but because he's scalping he has the frequency of trades to enable him to average out up to a profit before the days close. I only put on 3-4 trades a day max - so if there's a loser and a scrubbed trade and I decide not to trade for the rest of the day - then that's a negative day. Next day I may make a bundle - hardly consistent but if you took things on a monthly basis then yes they are (ish ! ).

 

[wouste]

I make money! But i'm a long way from being consistent. To get that one nailed would be heaven.

Am in the same situation as you.
but someday...

 

[BSD]

I guess a lot of this about what people expect, the way they define failure or success.

This is about people expecting returns of X per month, BUT NOT BEING WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT THAT ENTAILS A DRWDOWN OF Y !!!

There is NO way around that !!!

People applaud Ed Seykotas hundreds of thousands of percent returns he had in Market Wizards.

Who wouldn't want that for themselves ?

But the crux of the matter is this: in a separate interview Jack Schwager said that Seykota showed him his equity curve which had drawdowns of up to 50% several times on his way.

Most people here would have given up on their system way before that, or would have hopped from method to method at every first series of losers, inevitably always changing methods at that exact time when their original method would have produced some winners again that would more than have made up for the previous losers, but because they weren't trading the original method any longer they weren't able to capitalise on that.

We keep having this discussion on winning percentages and all, but let's be honest: the reason we have the 90% failure rate in trading is because almost nobody here or elsewhere has the nerves to EITHER handle being wrong more often than they are right while cutting their losses short an dletting their winners run, OR can't handle higher hit rate low time frame scalping either.

I realise I do keep saying this, BUT IT IS ONE HOLY GRAIL next to high hit rate scalping:

If you only win one third of the time, you will still be consistently net profitable if you keep your losses tight enough that your winners will average out at 3 times their size !!!

I don't consider myself the greatest trader around, I don't have a particular feel for markets, but I am consistently net profitable, BECAUSE I LET MY WINNERS RUN, and DO NOT MIND BEING WRONG A LOT !!!

It is ONLY that that saves me time and time again, not a particularly clever method, just trade management !

Can't make it any clearer than that, lol.

 

[JTrader]

Yes Markus

having the nerve to continue trading after a series of losses

AND

TO have the nerve to Let your profits run

and

kNOWING WHEN TO SIT on the sidelines during unfavourable conditions, like hoggums this morning



are all key factors

 

[BSD]

J and Hoggums, totally agree, that is a second holy grail: EVERY method will lose money when markets are chopping around in a very tight range, not trading then is really one of the most important things to do.

 

[*JDR*]

I'm a net winner.
My stops are always set but I often exit a profitable trade too early.

However, I trade so infrequently I'm not sure you can consider me a trader.... my last position was shorting SPY at 100 bucks..... how long ago was that?! LOL.

And just to prove my first point... my trail kicked me out at $92.... it then went to 74 or something.

 

[*JDR*]

Maybe those that lose are setting themselves up for a fall by wanting too much?

My basic aim is to beat bank account interest.... second aim is 1% a month return...... other than that I don't really care...

not trying to live off it (though lets face it that is THE dream)

 

[BSD]

I guess a lot of this about what people expect, the way they define failure or success.

This is about people expecting returns of X per month, BUT NOT BEING WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT THAT ENTAILS A DRWDOWN OF Y !!!

There is NO way around that !!!

People applaud Ed Seykotas hundreds of thousands of percent returns he had in Market Wizards.

Who wouldn't want that for themselves ?

But the crux of the matter is this: in a separate interview Jack Schwager said that Seykota showed him his equity curve which had drawdowns of up to 50% several times on his way.

Still had this on file from some mag:

"Fleckenstein: The vast majority of the Wizards are discretionary traders, people who regardless of their discipline still include a large dose of human judgment in their decision making. Very few depend on a mechanical systems. Ed Seykota, who was in the first Wizards book, was an exception. Have you found that it's harder to achieve outstanding results with a Black Box vs. a well-disciplined but still discretionary approach?

Schwager: Yes. All the Market Wizards have a specific methodology, but most of them do not have systems. There's a reason for that. It's very difficult to develop a trading system that can realize tremendous returns with low risk. There are people who have systems that make a lot of money but have high volatility. Even in the case of Seykota, his phenomenal returns were still achieved with great volatility. When I went out to Nevada to interview him, I remember his pulling out this 15-foot-long graph, showing his equity appreciating from $10,000 up to $15 million. But along the way, it could drop from, say, $6 million down to $3 million."

 

[Skill Leverage]

were you into casino poker or online poker???

Both, played online cash games and casino tournaments. I also was part of a circuit of 'rounders' who played in cash games around Edinburgh, lots of cab drivers and divorcées with too much money and not enough sense. I still multitable 6-max NL occassionally, but I needed to take a long-term break as I was kind of losing my life to it, even though I was doing well.

 

[advfntrader]

well I'm certainly not profitable. heavy losses 1 year ago and now small losses as I have scaled down. still feel I'm learning though and I believe it can be done or I wouln't be here !!!

 

[tommac]

I make a decent living--but realised a while back that I do not have the bottle to try and go for broke. Just a steady ( decent )income. I blew up badly a good few years ago by getting greedy and decided not to do it again.
The older I get the smaller I trade.

 

[trader_dante]

You definetly have to know when NOT to trade.

You do this by examining what links your losing trades.

If you realise for example that every losing trade you take are ones that are entered after 5pm then you simply don't trade after 5pm!

This is why keeping a journal of your trades or keeping track by some other means is so essential.

The guy that I was talking about that is so consistent admitted to me that he has difficulty in the afternoons. So what does he do? He simply makes money in the morning and then goes home.

One thing I greatly respected in one of Spanishs' posts was where he realised that the market was unlikely to make a decisive mood and rather than trying to get involved went off and did something else (despite his need to make money to pay for his rent - a ludicrous situation but thats another story lol)

I've lately realised that the vast majority of my trades aren't getting as far as their first target before reversing. It seems like for the last couple of months every trade I take gets up anywhere between 15 - 80 ticks/pips and then reverses on me and stops me out. Now getting up that much on a trade may sound good to some people but with my style of trading it affects my overall profitability.

So what I have done is taken action.

I've requested they put me back on the simulator at work to ride out the storm but also so I can keep my mind active and increase my experience without risking real money and judge when market conditions are better for my style of trading.

At the same time I've pulled all the money out of my personal accounts which means I have nothing in there to trade with. If I see something that looks unmissable (I am eyeing oil and waiting for a test of $41) then I have to go to the bother of transferring funds in to take it.

This stops overtrading where you keep taking all setups (even the average ones) in the hope that things will suddenly come good.

If you are in a hole, stop digging and assess the surroundings.

 

[JTrader]

whats been piss1ing me off lately is ive been disciplined waiting for the ideal setups, and they fail. Meanwhile the less than ideal setups have succeeded.

walking away when market is in a gridlock is defo good idea.Things is, with my timeframes, it doesn't take long (i.e. 20 mins) for expansion to occur and the possibility of a really good setup to present itself.