Want to create a competitive trader thread! looking for 2-3 traders willing to compete against me in 2018!

Beginner Questions
1

Hey guys and girls,

I came up with an idea where I want to compete with other traders and want to create a thread for it and wish to start it on the 1st Jan 2018. I am currently practising on a demo account, building my business plan, trade plan, technical analysis and trade journal to get my live account up and running in 2018.

The main focus is to exponentially increase my learning experience by getting involved with other traders which will indefinitely be a good experience for the counterparty also.

I can describe myself as being competitive, hardworking, transparent, dedicated, team-work oriented, willing to journalise, put my analysis plans on the forum and show my results weekly. Which I do hope the person i am competing against will do the same.

What is it in it for you?

Keeps you motivated, keeps you on track, less procrastination, external accountability, possibly life-long trustworthy trading buddies, discussion on your analysis with other traders, compete against other potential profitable retail traders, working alongside other traders to expand your knowledge, shortcut your learning time and most importantly it’ll be a fun experience. There are so many benefits that I can’t describe it all.

Also, it’ll help with risk and money management!

P.S: if you are lazy and become dependant on answers DO NOT EVEN APPLY, do not waste my time.

The basic idea of the game

It doesn’t matter how much capital you have, I plan on only investing only $200 USD, in the end, we’ll be calculating the ROE monthly and hopefully, we get to the end of 2018 with our final results as positive.
Also, it is compulsory to show the initial balance in the start to know what the ROE in the end will be, with all your TRADES shown weekly, which I will be doing also.

The winner will be the person with the highest ROE in the end. :grin:

If there is a prize, we’ll see what happens :smiley:.

Anyways, if you are interested, send me a message through babypips with your reasons or say hello.

I’ll like to pick 2-3 serious traders willing to go until the end of the year showing their analysis, trade journal and trade plan with transparency on their trades.

1 Like
2

Interesting concept. Hard to enforce, though, as people can always hide their losers and parade their winners, but if it’s all for the funsies that would be pretty lame.

Which of course means that’s exactly what’s going to happen. :stuck_out_tongue:

You might want to consider quarterly competitions, though. A year is a long time, and sticking it out for three month bursts might be a little more realistic.

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It’s mostly for educational purposes, In my opinion, having a group of traders on the same road as you will exponentially increase all positive aspects of learning, motivation and dramatically lower your learning curve. I’ll Take that advice making it 3 months with a trailing period to people who are willing to go the long haul, which seems reasonable.

That’s why I asked for their initial investment because if u comply with reasonable risk or money management and your trades don’t add up with your initial investment, then we’ll know you have reimbursed yourself. There is nothing wrong with equity reimbursement just you’ll have ROE -100% :stuck_out_tongue:

I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens to me :grin:

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Hi Ben,

Count me in.
1st Jan 2018 is it?

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Hey! yes it will be :grin:,

I was reading your trading journal previously, I hope I can help you achieve success in 2018 so you are definitely welcome.

Take a break, revise what happen and start fresh for 2018! :grin:

We’ll be working as a team and the biggest benefit is you’ll be getting external accountability from other traders, like myself a prodigy :grin:.

You fit all the criteria I was looking for.

So I am looking for 2 more

6

Sorry bro. But this is a dumb idea. Trading isn’t a competition.

No good can be made from this no matter how you try n sex it up.

Alpha, you of all people need to stay away from this.

7

Thanks for the concern bob,

I have choosen my path. Failure is not an option for me. My objective is to become one of the top ten trader in the world. Get head hunted by some big institution and go professional from there.

I’m starting to feel that i can see the market more accurately. However, the emotional control doesn’t seem to hold up yet. I get too carried away with utilising too much available margin.

Anyway, to post on a weekly basis take much commitment, might just help me to focus better, i think. And being transparent to the world puts me at risk of becoming the world’s biggest laughing stock. It is a risk i must take. No venture no gain.

3 Likes
8

I wish you well then bro but stand by my original statement. No good can be had of such a “competition”

1 Like
9

Hey bob, thanks for your opinion, I’ll only agree to it partly if it is unhealthy competition.

If you see competition as unhealthy, I will rebuttal that statement because If there was no competition in the real world, there will be no improvements on a lot of things in life.

Technology wouldn’t be advancing without competition, the same could be said about trading, if you don’t have a rival you’ll never know your strong or weak points.

Trading competition with attaining knowledge isn’t too bad plus it pushes people to try their best.

If you were solely trading by yourself, only you decide what your limit is, if you get external accountability, at least you open your mind with other traders and can learn a bit about yourself.

My thoughts.

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I’ll be in the same position :grin:, but everyone will forget about it after! Haha either laughing stock of the century or the best idea ever, I’ll take that risk.

Plus everyone is always sceptical about new ideas and that’s how the world works plus pushing people out of the comfort zone is seen as a no no, which has become a social norm.

No matter a situation there is always pros and cons, I hope to favour the pros over cons.

I’ll take the chance of looking like a fool because it’ll make an interesting thread and I’ll guarantee you, everyone on babypips will be looking at the thread eventually.

Who wouldn’t want to see 3 to 4 traders show their weekly outcome with their different style of analysis on the same thread, that we’ll be discussing and analysing each other trades on that thread, I’ll think it’ll be entertaining for the forum and we’ll improve as traders in the end! :+1:

My two cent.

Also, I welcome structure change on our trade report, changing it two weeks if need be. The most important aspect of this competition is to become better traders, hands down.

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Hello Ben, it was great to read your trading journal. For me the most important fact is education. In the forex education sector you will find different sub lanes where you can talk about. Another interesting thing is strategies. Here a lot of buzz you will get to talk about. My sense of trading says that it also goes under education tags. I think all the important facts and things will go under this thread.

1 Like
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Thank you for your kind words, it’ll motivate me to improve my trade plan, journal and analysis to make it easier for people to read on babypips, I hope eventually I can make my trade journal, plan and analysis as detailed but simple to read for others as I develop my concept of trading.

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i agree with bob and i want to add on greed and overconfidence can blow up a trader , its takes time to one understand this

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m.k.a

Have you read my Trade journal?

I make it as transparent with my losses and wins, do you know how much I emphasis on risk management on my trades. Before I even enter a trade, my first question is whether my risk/reward aligns with my thinking, I put it on my number 1 priority, if it does not, I will not enter that trade.

I am confident because I am honest in my mistakes and compliment myself for the winners I do achieve. From my perspective, most people do not know what it really takes to become a trader and have some quotes given to them from some book. I read your trade journal, and you only talk about your percentage terms of winnings, you have not shown me your approach to trading. It shows me you still have that greed implication towards your trades, you hide your mistakes to mask your self-confidence.

P.S: I can read people like a book, i told you i am a prodigy.

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hey ben bro
thank you show some interest and reading my journal (there is not much there i know) purposely !
i really not need have to must should like want to show anyone nothing , but its only matter of time maybe i give you some hint how i do trade , but my approach is simple and not holy grail and different with others so im not hiding you anything and i don’t represent other kind of system as my own to misleading anyone everyone have their own view even if im going to let you see how i trade there is high possibility some one come and call it hey that’s crap and we know it , its doesnt gain your trading trust me
i encourage you keep going
there is alot of trading systems in here in babypips and other forums have a look
good luck

17

Interesting idea!

I have a suggestion for you, Ben.

I’m wondering whether you’ve asked yourself why Bob and m.k.a are saying what they’re saying, and why so many more experienced traders would agree with them?

(I never thought I’d actually agree with m.k.a about anything to do with trading, to be honest, but I was wrong about that, because I do, this time!).

As your idea stands now, I honestly think it will be bad and damaging and counterproductive - both to the people who take part in it and especially for other members and viewers of the forum who read the thread.

That’s the problem, right there.

You’ll be concentrating not only on the wrong thing, but on the one thing that it benefits would-be pro traders to avoid at all cost: an orientation of “how much profit you can make”.

Although very intuitive and completely understandable, and conveniently and easily measured for competition purposes, this is totally the wrong approach, in my opinion (and I think Bob was alluding to much the same thing).

Successful trading isn’t about how much profit you can make: it’s all about how you manage your risk and preserve your capital at all cost.

Perhaps the single most important aspect of “trading education” that determines, in the long run, which people are destined to end up joining the 3% of successes rather than the 97% of failures is whether and how and when they learn and understand this, and how they use that knowledge.

The main reason competitions do damage is that they encourage exactly the opposite perspective - a losing one, in the long run.

My suggestion: the winner should be the person with the lowest pro rata peak-to-trough drawdown over the duration of the competition (by “pro rata” I mean “adjusted in proportion to the number of trades taken”).

That way you’ll be encouraging, rewarding and concentrating on a good habit instead of a damaging one.

Here are two issues for you to consider, in deciding whether you want the emphasis to be on profit or on risk management:-

  1. Many of the very worst, most crooked, most horrible, most scammy counterparty forex brokers try to attract new customers by holding profit-based competitions specifically because they want to attract traders with a profit-based mentality who don’t concentrate on risk management, as long experience has taught them that those are the accounts they’ll empty over and over and over again, and that’s how they make their living. They know that people whose aim is to make as much profit as possible are eventually going to end up big losers, in the long run.

  2. Professional institutions who train traders to trade with the company’s own funds (typically via a graduate-entry recruitment scheme, taking people fresh from college with their math degrees or whatever) also run incentive competitions for their trainees, often giving away bonuses or cases of Champagne or similar prizes, and their assessment criteria are invariably minimizing drawdowns, because this is the habit they want to instill in their employees. They know that people whose aim is to minimize drawdowns are eventually going to end up big winners, in the long run.

So - do you think that perhaps looking at this thing from a different perspective might help? :slight_smile:

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18

When you have some spare time, and an efficient copy/paste hotkey set up, there are 500+ other threads throughout the forum where that essential observation would be beneficial (whether it will be “welcome” is a slightly different matter!).

Meanwhile the entire post above should be a “sticky”, somewhere, since it contains probably the most valuable single precept for newbie traders to master.

2 Likes
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Hey m.k.a,

if your trading is simple, then you’re on the right track and its the best, people that believe trading is not meant to be simple but the most sophisticated way of trading with all technical indicators have it all wrong.

Sorry, I jabbed at you, I lost it because I gave you credit for what you had to say. I didn’t mean any harm, but when I saw your trade journal which only showed me how much you won, I was pretty upset, the most basic and most essential requirement is to have an honest trade journal with your views, accept constructive criticism and take each one to open your mind. If you cannot face your mistakes, then you will never learn my friend.

Take this as constructive criticism and if you openly show me your thoughts on this forum, I hope you make a trade journal with your actual thinking, I will be there to give you my opinion, I will try to give you my best explanation without downgrading you but give you an opportunity to become a better trader.

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Hey LukasVisser, I totally agree and never thought of it that way, thank you. I will actually change my ROE to lowest drawdown, in the end, I want to create a group of traders in 2018 that can become successful, I am one for this 100%.

My main priority is to create good habits; ROE will be detrimental and will create bad habits not required in professional traders. I will definitely need to change it.

2 Likes
21

Thank you for articulating that so very well.