spanish89...

[JRP2891]

What has happened here is what happens to a lot of traders, they make money trading a certain way during a certain market phase, however when the market changes and they're still trading the same strategy unsuccessfully they can't understand it. This is even more difficult to accept and remedy for traders who have been unsuccessful for a period of time and then hit a good run during this market phase as they believe they have cracked it, and think what made them money before should make them money again.

He's in too deep and needs to get out for a few months minimum. All this bad luck talk is just another way of not accepting responsibility. However probably the most destructive thought pattern he has is how he always should've made more cash no matter what he earnt. Never bemoan a profit spanish! If you do, you are destined to be eternally unsatisfied in your trading performance which is only detrimental to your state of mind and consequently your results, as you've found out.

 

[wasp]

i dont think you can say there is no luck involved. for instance you could be lucky to get filled at a certain price and unlucky not to have been.

Nope. Slippage, get over it. There is no such thing.

9/11 > use a stoploss and correct leverage and its just another loss where YOU were wrong

Same with Soros or Buffet doing something or Bill Gates getting shot... anything

Even the example of falling and hitting your head on the buy shortcut... Should have been more careful. Or if your kid got in the office and starting hitting the keyboard...

You have to take responsibility for EVERY occurance.

 

[N Rothschild]

from that statement it almost sounds like you dont even think there is such a thing as luck in any aspect?

 

[wasp]

No, not really.

Pick an example in anything and i'm sure I can turn it round. It actually really bugs me when people look for an excuse when 9/10, it can be relayed back to their own fault. I may just be over critical of others, and myself, but I see no situation, specifically in trading, where it can be blamed elsewhere.

 

[N Rothschild]

umm how do you explain casinos then

 

[north5]

IMO: luck is probability taken personally

 

[N Rothschild]

inst probability exactly what luck is...there is a chance it could be any number of outcomes..like a roulette wheel..

 

[wasp]

umm how do you explain casinos then

In which respect?

The occasional winners? As North5 says, just probabilities...

 

[N Rothschild]

chance/luck/probability all the same thing really? a roulette wheel there is nothing but chance you will hit 1 or 36 diff numbers..no other imputs except the wheel itself..if you dont think roulette is lucky maybe you should hit the tables some time

 

[wasp]

Its a statistical probability your number will come up on the roulette wheel occasionally, not luck though.

So if I bought a lottery ticket for Saturday and lost, does that make unlucky or because there is such a high number of buyers that statistically and probability wise, I could have won?

If I sat at the roulette table picking 17 every time, I will win at some point, but it will cost me probably more than I'd win and its just statistical that, eventually, it will land in 17.

EDIT:

Trying to keep the thread on topic, S89 only has himself to blame for every outcome.

 

[N Rothschild]

if the lottery was say 2-1 odds and you lost over and over again..i would call that unlucky?

 

[north5]

I would call it fixed.

 

[N Rothschild]

so logically you spin a roulette wheel enough times you HAVE to win becuase of the probabilities? i disagree...

 

[wasp]

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/general-trading-chat/43812-luck-you-3.html

probably better here than on S89 thread...

 

[new_trader]

so logically you spin a roulette wheel enough times you HAVE to win becuase of the probabilities? i disagree...

No, you HAVE to lose.

 

[FXSCALPER2]

No, not really.

Pick an example in anything and i'm sure I can turn it round. It actually really bugs me when people look for an excuse when 9/10, it can be relayed back to their own fault. I may just be over critical of others, and myself, but I see no situation, specifically in trading, where it can be blamed elsewhere.

You sound like Trader Dante increasingly, although I reckon you are a cool dude. You can have a nice long just before Soros says the euro may not survive and you get stopped. You would be a dumb ass if you were not using stops or being prepared for stuff like that but it certainly makes no sense to say there is no luck involved. In fact, the outcome of any individual trade is all a matter of luck because any **** can happen.

I reckon you should differenciate between what you can do something about and what you can't and be prepared for the latter. To say there is no such thing as luck is meaningless because it is like saying there is no stone or something. In a minute you would tell us the baby who is caught up in a civil war is not unlucky compared to my baby. The damn thing is everywhere really.

 

[Hoggums]

All this talk of luck is completely irrelevant. He guessed the market direction wrong. Big deal. We all do that.

That's not the reason he lost >50% of his account this month.

He lost so much money because he held on to those trades in the hope that they'd turn around. Eventually coming to his senses far too late and realising a big loss.

He should have taken the loss straight away when it became apparent things weren't going to go his way. Then he would have had the rest of the day and the following 1-2 days to re-assess the market with a clear head and trade accordingly. Instead he sat there parallised, worrying about his balance - not trading, just watching that -ve valuation hoping it will turn positive.

It was all of his own doing.

 

[new_trader]

That's why you should ALWAYS trade with STOPS....TIGHT STOPS and STICK TO THEM, just in case you are unlucky.

 

[wasp]

You sound like Trader Dante increasingly, although I reckon you are a cool dude. You can have a nice long just before Soros says the euro may not survive and you get stopped. You would be a dumb ass if you were not using stops or being prepared for stuff like that but it certainly makes no sense to say there is no luck involved. In fact, the outcome of any individual trade is all a matter of luck because any **** can happen.

I reckon you should differenciate between what you can do something about and what you can't and be prepared for the latter. To say there is no such thing as luck is meaningless because it is like saying there is no stone or something. In a minute you would tell us the baby who is caught up in a civil war is not unlucky compared to my baby. The damn thing is everywhere really.

This is why we strive to have an 'edge' though. My losses, in my head, aren't losses, nor bad luck and the reason they occurred is irrelevent to me. Just another set in the sequence of my more often than not financially increasing business plan.

If you owned a shop, and one day, you only had 4 customers, 3 days, 25 and one day 150, is that bad/good luck or just the ratio of people in need of your product at any given time.

 

[foredog]

The thing about "luck" is...

If you're short and something unforseen happens and it spikes up and hits your stopped you'll only lose X% of your account as you've got a stop to counter these.

If your short and something happens to casue the price to plummet then you can run your "luck" and possibly make many times more profit then any "unlucky" event will lose as your losses will be set but profits unlimtited.