Oh I see,So now the percentage of losers has been increased by Charlie to 100%.
Not much point in posting anything more here then…
I said no such thing.
(I said that I don’t believe 5% are steady winners, and it looks like Eddie doesn’t, either.)
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Seems you did…
The whole idea of this thread was to look into the positive side of those who do make money. If you wish to drag this back into the same gutter as all those other threads about how many lose money then go there to post…
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You’re mistaken, Manxx. I said that my answer to “how do 5% of retail traders make money” would be “they don’t”. That’s because I don’t accept that the figure’s as high as 5%. (“They” meant “the 5% you’re alleging” - sorry if it was ambiguous.)
What’s wrong with you? I was simply responding to Eddie. Did someone get out of the wrong side of the bed, today?
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Let’s wait until we meet the first person making at least $60,000 a year from this, making anything less than a decent yearly salary can hardly be considered as ‘making money’, surely?
I’m just stirring the pot here
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No, I am just tired of your constant negativity pervading everything and anything whenever anyone tries to achieve something positive and constructive here. But don’t mind me just carry on, this thread is destroyed now anyway - no big surprise there…
I guess they are exceptionally talented, hardworking and stress resistant. They have to really have unique combination of skills to be excellent.
It is a good thread @eddieb and a few have tried to put some original thought and effort into it - particularly @anon46773462 's posts have given some food for thought.
Sad that the content has been diluted and devalued by negativity latterly.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether the thread gets a huge number of hits or not.
It is a shame that we can’t just collaborate and go forward a little.
The fact is that we do seem to have identified a few of the potential ingredients already.
In particular, I was intrigued by the suggestion that some of those entering the trading rooms of the big institutions preferred to walk away and still am trying to get my head around the concept of trading with a “Boss” looking over your shouder as a device to “sharpen your attention” !
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Okay , on-topic and only positive
- Trade with the Trend
- Trade Against the Crowd ( remember the crowd is part of the 95%)
- Trade on Price Action ( not Indicators)
- Match Strongest Currencies to Weakest ( see my thread for more on this)
- Be Patient, wait for the ideal setup
- Protect your Capital, have a written exit and profit taking plan in place for all trades
do these things and you have a fighting chance to join the 5%
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What proof is there that only 5% make money and 95% end up closing their accounts. Could this be a marketing gimmick by all those out there selling lessons on how to trade??? From my own experience I would say Yes trading is difficult but all those who get involved for the sake of making money eventually learn how to trade, develop a strategy and make money. Maybe not the millions per month newbies dream of but a reasonable amount. I would not be surprised if the true statistics are that 95% make money and 5% do not because they are too impatient or too ambitious!!
by Nial Fuller: May 23rd, 2018
“‘Behind the scenes’ of any wealthy or successful person is thousands of hours of hard work and repetition. While the poor man was playing video games or binge-watching Netflix, the rich guy was putting in the ‘hard yards’, doing the ‘boring stuff’ that most people don’t want to do or that they make excuses for not doing.”
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But Few are also having their like of pairs which they feel is right for their trading work.
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Sorry Dennis, completely disagree here.
But one thing that hasn’t been highlighted yet is the fact that we will do tomorrow, the same thing we did today because it’s the same thing that worked for us yesterday. Trading is very very boring. It’s the same thing day, after day, after day. But I firmly believe those of us that do “succeed” do so because we having been boring traders for years. Does not matter if thats of tick charts or daily.
Have at look at Dennis or my myself. We do the same thing over and over. It’s not very exciting. Now have a look at old mate Aaron. Now there is a social networking marketer hard at work developing his brand. Sure, his work looks “sexy” but it jumps from here to there. Thats good when trying to attract naive newbies to your market offering but it floats from point a to point b to point c trying to keep the target audience interested. Yet not one live trade, why is this so??? Hard to believe someone trading like this can be successful at the game.
Wash, rinse, repeat is the key to fun.
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My old friend bob. Its funny how engaging with the community and sharing analysis has become contraversial. I both follow and share analysis with the larger community as a whole. Now to be clear I provide free chart analysis to the larger trading community, and I make my predictions before the trade plays out. Im not sure how it could get any more transparent than that. If I make predictions that are consistently wrong then its out there for the world to see and walk away from. But I would think you would know that since you are speaking as you know quite a lot about me. I also dont know where you get the newbies idea from. Firstly I dont teach anyone how to trade, I simply provide my take on current market conditions. The commentary I provide assumes knowledge in the source material, and most of the people that read or watch my commentaries are already experienced in technical analysis themselves. I actually dont get anything out of the work I put in except the enjoyment of engaging with the trading community, well that and people throwing crap for no reason.
As for posting live trades, i dont because exactly what I trade is no ones business. As i mentioned already, I enjoy sharing ideas with the community but what I trade and how I manage those trades is my business. And if you think I am under obligation to post my trades live just so I can share ideas with the trading community, well then you sir are the one with the problem, not me. There is only 1 person who see my trades and that is my wife. Thats fair enough since I am trading our retirement nest egg.
I dont have anything against you and think you post some pretty good stuff here on the forums and really dont see why you feel the need to attack. The attacks are innacurate anyways and it just makes no sense. There arent a whole lot of us that stick with the game for 10+ years, and those of us who have and found a way to be profitable shouldnt be attacking each other.
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I am going to post this once and only once in the slightest hope it can end some of these types of attacks. As I mentioned before what I trade is my personal business and I am choosing to show a snapshot of my trades so we can maybe have better community cohesion here on BP and stop the attacks.
From top to bottom, I have a multi-legged short put trade going on in XLE (it’s a proxy for oil), which for those who don’t know a short put will be profitable if price goes up or sideways. It will lose if price goes way down. I sold them into the selloff on Friday.
I have a short put strategy in GLD, just as I posted in my analysis when gold was at 1290 before it popped up to 1305 just a few days later. Again a short put that will make money if price goes up or sideways. Actually I am going to close this trade come Tuesday since it’s already over 50% in profit.
I am long stock in SPY. This goes with the analysis articles and videos I made all this and last week where I said that I believe indices have a current bullish bias due to recent bullish technicals.
Finally, I have a strangle options strategy in TWTR, a strategy where I will make money if price closes between my strike prices + my options premium. Premium in TWTR was 7$ per strangle when i made this trade and as you can see by the screenshot I have a 31-32 strangle so I will make money if price closes between 24$ and 39$ by expiration, which as you can see in the screenshot is 20days.
This post is a perfect example of why I don’t post specific trades, which is that everyone is trading differently in both strategy and mechanics. Some are scalping, some are swing trading, and some long term trading. Some are trading spot markets, some are trading options, and some futures or ETFs. Some exit on strict profit and stop loss levels, some exit based on time in the market, and some exit based on dynamic analysis. The point being the analysis and commentary i provide is method agnostic, in that if I share analysis that says I believe that the SP500 is going up that is something everyone can use regardless of their specific trading rules, strategy, trade mechanics, money management rules. Now if I say “I am shorting puts at the 122 strike price with 45 days to expiration, and closing at 75% profit or 14 DTE, and if price turns against my I will roll the position into a 122 short straddle”, that is so narrow and specific it does no one any good. Not to mention I balance gamma, delta, theta, correlation and beta at a portfolio level so I am making each individual trade fit how I want my portfolio to look. Again more reasons to not share specific trades because each person needs to make their trades fit their own portfolio goals as well. So I share my analysis ideas with the community and let everyone decide how they might incorportate it into their own analysis. Pretty straightforward and simple if you ask me.
To everyone that sees this post, all of my analysis is out there for anyone to see and form their own opinions about https://www.tradingview.com/u/krugman25/. Now I will suggest that if you find free commentary and analysis highly offensive as bob does, then don’t read or watch my stuff. To everyone else, if that type of thing floats your boat then please go ahead and follow my channel. There may be some sort of nugget you get out of it to make it worth your while.
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Wow, thats a lot of effort for little old me 
But it does highlight another factor to success. Other peoples opinions just do not matter to us.
When speculating, only one persons opinion matters, your own. There are literally 1000’s of analysts out there willing to give you their opinion. They count for jack. If they’re not saying the price will go up, then they’ll tell you the price is going down. They’ll point out historical support and resistance levels. Talk of 200 day MA’s trending up, stochs being oversold and volatility returning from the markets. They point out NFP reports coming out tonight or meetings being held. Some banker speaking. And the greatest disclaimer of all, market conditions.
And it all doesn’t matter because my local bank has just had a billion dollars paid in by customers and now has to get rid of that excess stock. I don’t understand how banks work but I do understand inventory management. What inventory do banks hold? But thats just my opinion.
Which brings me back to the beginning. To succeed at this game, you have to be able to form your own opinion. You need to absorb the data that is provided to you. There is price. There is time. There is frequency (rate of price change) and there is economic data release. Not much really. You need to process this information in terms of how it relates to your speculating activities and then form and opinion. Not only that, one then needs to take ownership of the whole process.
So to sum up the thread so far. “Successful” traders are passionate. We trade because we love it. We work hard, damn hard. Harder than the next guy. We do the same thing, day in, day out. We do the same thing day in, day out. We do the same thing …(if you don’t get that little joke don’t trade period) And we are capable of independent thought, able to form and accept our own opinions. We certainly are not followers.
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Some good stuff here, @_bob, thanks! I’d like to add a few embellishments if I may…
Although I identify here with what you are saying, I wouldn’t personally call it “boring”. Rather, I would describe it as “disciplined routine/repetition” - which, for many people probably does translate as “boring”! 
Yes, it is pretty much the same routine every day but the market is forever changing and there are different factors influencing what we do, I guess it depends how much we want to get into the surrounding collateral stuff that doesn’t necessarily directly affect our trading decisions. But I think this also depends on one’s style of trading. Some traders are very mechanical (I don’t mean automated trading) in their approach and will base entries and exits on very explicitly defined criteria. But others, (like me), are more subjective about their reaction to their criteria. Although I have very clearly defined requirements for my trade entries, I subjectively evaluate them a lot before acting on them. And my exits are even more discretionary.Since I cannot determine at the start of any trade what might happen next or how long it might continue, I make my exit decisions along the way…and money management plays an enormously large part in this too, at least for me, anyway.
I think this is very important and well put. The world is teeming with information and events that could impact on one’s trades, and it is critical to know what issues are important, and when, and which are not. For example, a very short term trader will watch for data releases, speeches, etc, but other longer term traders like @Dennis3450 and @tommor will take note of far less of these events because they are trading the longer term picture and are not fuzzed by a typical quick reverse from an isolated comment or contradictive minor data release.
So it is indeed important to know which factors are specifically important to you and your personal style of trading.
I certainly go with this one!
Passion, commitment, dedication, determination…there are many appropriate words that apply to our way of life (and probably a lot of other less complimentary ones, too ). One of the strangest things about being constantly in the trading world is that few people outside it have any idea what we are talking about or doing! Which can also make it an isolated and sometimes lonely existence.
But one thing that is true about being a trader is that, whilst you can fool other people, you cannot fool yourself. You are right there, spread out all over your trade journal. Your method, your risk/money managment, you decision-making, your emotions, your results. You are alone in your responsibility for it, all of it, and there are no excuses - only survival, acceptance, learning, improving and moving on…
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Wow, thats a lot of effort for little old me
Put your ego away bob, its was not just for you 
Sure, solely trading other peoples opinions is not what experienced traders do. I think that goes without saying. But there is a community of millions of traders that form their own opinions and yet still enjoy and get value out of sharing ideas. If you want to hole up and never look at any other traders commentary or analysis, thats fine but it doesnt suddenly make you a superior trader. It’s just your personal style. Dont set up these imaginary guidelines and beat on people like me because we dont trade the way you think we should.
I’ll end this how I started it, wouldnt it be great if we could stop attacking each other just because we do things differently?
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The proof is pretty easy to come by, and it is amazing how often that 95% number comes up as it did in the article below, if only 5% of the most highly paid fund managers can beat the market then just how many retail traders do you think are beating the market
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Apples and Pears here my friend…
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