If I knew then what (I think) I know now...

Thought I'd throw this up as a discussion point and stick it for a while; for me the biggest ammendment I'd make retrospectively would be patience...I don't mean the patience to wait for my indicators to trigger so I can play my edge (that goes without saying) I mean patience in realising, at the very start of my fledgling trading career, that the journey has to be a slow one. Knowing that and consequently slowing yourself down would/could be a big advantage...it could 'protect' your psyche and your trading balance, for sure it would help prevent any blow ups.

If you're starting out perhaps it's worth taking on board that it will take approx. a year to become in any way highly proficent at trading so why not give yourself the comfort of that timescale? That doesn't necessarily mean profitable. Proficient with all the terminology; TFs, indicators, price action, platforms... Proficient with money management, discipline, executing your trading plan (over and over again) once you're absolutely sure (as sure as you can be) that you've found one to fit...

The patience phenomena I'd extend one stage further; I'd have only traded one security for enough time it took to be proficient. For example, if trading Forex I'd have chosen cable. It roughly oscillates on average 200 pips a day ('off' a 1 hour TF) I'd have attempted to find an edge/stick to a plan that returned me twenty pips every 24 hrs and then used that as a platform to build from...

Any feedback guys...? What would you have done differently?

Im always surprised at how so many traders always talk about pips when talking about their profit or system and not Risk to make those pips. How many pips made today/Pips profit this week or month? It's no good talking about making 20 pips per day when no mention of risk is being stated. 20pips with a 100pip stop is not the same as 20pips with a 10 pip stop. One is making 0.20R profit, the other is 2R profit a factor of 10 difference.

Concentrate on one market at first until you are consistent. Make as many mistakes as possible when it only costs you penny's not Pounds that's my advice.

Mark

No one Knows said:

Concentrate on one market at first until you are consistent. Make as many mistakes as possible when it only costs you penny's not Pounds that's my advice.

Mark

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good contribution, thanks...

Difficult question. Because ultimately any success now can only be measured against the failures of the past. So to an extent Im grateful for all the mistakes Ive made because the effort I have put in (and continue to put in) to correct them is what makes me a better trader today. As long as those weaknesses, whether they are technical or behavioral, are addressed and not dismissed, then the odds of success just increase.
To answer the question though I would say that I wish I knew how poorly knowledgeable I was then, eventhough I probably thought I knew it all!!! (and Im long the thought that I will be saying the same thing 10yrs from now about today lol)

Hello all, first time here. Anyone out there into spread betting? If so, I am interested in sharing what works for me with you and visa versa. Shay

Patience. After a few dozen trades I thought I knew how to trade. After a few hundred I thought I was a trader. Now, after a few thousand trades, I know what I must still learn in order to one day be a trader.

Black Swan said:

Thought I'd throw this up as a discussion point and stick it for a while; for me the biggest ammendment I'd make retrospectively would be patience...I don't mean the patience to wait for my indicators to trigger so I can play my edge (that goes without saying) I mean patience in realising, at the very start of my fledgling trading career, that the journey has to be a slow one. Knowing that and consequently slowing yourself down would/could be a big advantage...it could 'protect' your psyche and your trading balance, for sure it would help prevent any blow ups.

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Yes, yes and yes.

I would add that one has to discover one's own way of trading - there is no point in attempting to copy somebody else. Especially if the way you intend to do so is by buying a system from them.

This sounds impossible (and pointless) to a person who is just starting out, but in my opinion the sooner this realisation dawns, the sooner one can make real progress.

If I knew at the beginning that this business was going to cause me to make a decision between money and everything else that is important in life, I would have pursued my career in the arts.

If I knew then what (I think) I know now...
I would have stayed away from trading like the plauge.
What i know now is,that it's not about money and all about making good trades.
Trade what you see and not what you think,took some time to understand this.
:whistling

trader_dante said:

If I knew at the beginning that this business was going to cause me to make a decision between money and everything else that is important in life, I would have pursued my career in the arts.

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Cheers Tom, you thread killer... Good point though, don't wanna put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting that most folk have no fookin idea as to the level of commitment required, (at the potential expense of eveything else), trading takes in order to make it work?

As much as I hate to admit it, I started off in complete ignorance risking real money and inevitably losing .....

The road to profitability could have been a lot quicker, and less costly if I had assumed from the outset that I knew nothing and was prepared to put in the time to do proper research, including paper trading only at first and then only committing real money when profitable for two to three months...

Black Swan said:

Cheers Tom, you thread killer... Good point though, don't wanna put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting that most folk have no fookin idea as to the level of commitment required, (at the potential expense of eveything else), trading takes in order to make it work?

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You always hear people say if you have determination and perserverance and you are commited you can make it.

That's a pipe dream.

None of those factors alone will make you succesful.

I know many people that have studied the markets ten hours per day for several years with all the help, advice and tools to succeed at their disposal and still are not profitable.

You will need to find the right path for you out of the almost infinite number of possibilities. There is an element of luck in this.

And once you have found the path you have to stay on it. There is a whole lot of skill involved in this.

I suppose it would include, although not exclusively...

a. Technically speaking, price action provides the biggest clues if you can learn to read it.
b. You really don't have to know what will happen next to make money...it really is a question of playing your trading edge, whatsoever that is.
c. Having, understanding and playing your edge require sometimes different skill sets....some have without understanding, some think they understand without actually having, ...the profitable traders are those that have, understand and play it.
d. It turns out that it's a marathan not a sprint although we all start out hoping it's a sprint.
e. Conistency is key to survival and this relates to a skill set (mostly psychological) of actually making your trading edge, that you fully understand, work for you.

Trading doesn't have to take over yoyr life although to get to the stage of being a consistently profitable trader it probably will at some point. This stage reached may allow you to get the other parts of your life back that you sacrificed getting there, or discover new life enhancing things that befit you as an older changed person. Time is something that you cannot get back.

I concur with other comments on this thread so far.

G/L

One thing I did know at the start, that absolutely saved me, was to demo or at most stick to the pennies-per-pip IG stuff.

I realised that learning how to trade should be free or at least very inexpensive. Black Swan commented on another thread (about someone who paid some conman £2,500 for tuition) that you can trade for a very long time with a small amount of capital. In that time, you can learn a great deal at little cost.

For a long time it's just a question of staying in the game - but new traders are too worried about getting banned by their brokers for winning too much to realise.

I have to say that any newbie starting off, and using these boards as a starting point and in particular some of the best threads such as Make Money Trading would be at a serious advantage....

You cannot trust anyone in this business except yourself.

There is no way you are going to learn this business 'part time' while still doing the day job. If this is how you intend to learn then be prepared to spend anything upto 5-7 years to fully understand.

Its a long hard slog (thousands upon thousands of hours screentime) to find out what works, and what doesnt.

When you do find something that works you need to develop it into some kind of repeatable method that makes more money than it loses in the long run and keep doing it over and over.

Nobody knows what is going to happen next, the guy on bloomberg doesnt know, traders on forums claiming to be the bees knees dont know, your coach/mentor doesnt know. Anyone who claims they do have inside information or they are lying.

QUOTE from bbmac: "Trading doesn't have to take over yoyr life although to get to the stage of being a consistently profitable trader it probably will at some point. This stage reached may allow you to get the other parts of your life back that you sacrificed getting there, or discover new life enhancing things that befit you as an older changed person. Time is something that you cannot get back."

in my exp, and my op, this is true of almost anything, from theatre to plumbing to hedonism...so well said! *g*

I think anyone starting with trading should be forced to read a thread like this. I guess everyone who opens a trading account, puts in some money and is thus allowed to click on the buy and sell buttons thinks "Wow, now I am trader!". But unlike to most any area in life, trading has almost no barrier to entry and suddenly you find yourself competing against everyone including the best. Moreover, you will have to fight against your own weaknesses. It´s like trying to fight against Mike Tyson after reading the Wikipedia entry on boxing.

I also didn't know when starting out that the 'mind issues' would far outweigh the importance of a strategy/system. Impossible to place an exact percentage but I'd hazard a guess that your edge in this game is 70% psyche and 30% strat...

Black Swan said:

I also didn't know when starting out that the 'mind issues' would far outweigh the importance of a strategy/system. Impossible to place an exact percentage but I'd hazard a guess that your edge in this game is 70% psyche and 30% strat...

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Heartily agree with that. Being of a scientific & analytic disposition I just thought all you needed was a decent TA system - after all, maths shows that probabilties are gonna be right in the end ..............

I didn't make proper progress until I started work on the "me" issues!