Does anyone here actually make money trading?

I've been registered here for quite some time. I thought I'd learn something useful here but it seems to be little more than load of people talking about new systems they've invented, or bought, which they reckon they'll clean-up with, and other people who can program the charting software backtesting said systems only to conclude that they don't work or that they do, but suffer too much drawdown to be worth the effort.

I am yet to find a discussion here that doesn't appear to contain lot of dead horses and a lot of 'would-be' traders flogging said horses with near-mechanical determination. I'm deeply sceptical about the credability of forums like this for one simple reason. If I had methods capable of generating reliable returns I wouldn't be on an internet forum chatting about it, I'd be sat on a big yacht in the Bahamas, making millions on my laptop, and sipping Champagne while toned 18 yr old babes in bikinis rubbed oil into me... and each other.

The longer I try to make money trading the more deeply suspicious I become that actually, the only ones who do are those who are inside some special bubble where exists knowledge that will never be allowed out of said bubble, and those on the outisde will never be let in. There are people out there who make millions trading and they must have learned to do it somewhere, but where... and does anyone here actually make a living from trading... and if so, how?

ok, you're right, you got me bang to rights, guv'nor, I'll come quietly.

my fantasy bubble of trading has been well and truly burst, and will confess I spend all my day reading T2W and pontificating upon things I know nought about, sipping cider from a can in my dinghy in the english channel. I do have nubile girls frollicking about, but I have to send that DVD back to Blockbusters soon.

I hope God (other dieties are available) will have mercy on my soul.

does anyone have any good recipes for duck?(I seem to have some spare ones waddling about)

NB: quiet day, as the big move north on cable struck before my login time of 7-am, and I am uncertain if it will continue up, or fall back, so am out for FX. waiting for US-session on SPX.

Trendie,

You've been a member since early 2004. Good job you're only punting 1p spreadbets or you'd have run out of cash for Special Brew by now

I've been here a few years too: amazing how I love losing money. Need the giro to come through soon so I can back a few more losers.

MitchT said:

I've been registered here for quite some time. I thought I'd learn something useful here but it seems to be little more than load of people talking about new systems they've invented, or bought, which they reckon they'll clean-up with, and other people who can program the charting software backtesting said systems only to conclude that they don't work or that they do, but suffer too much drawdown to be worth the effort.

I am yet to find a discussion here that doesn't appear to contain lot of dead horses and a lot of 'would-be' traders flogging said horses with near-mechanical determination. I'm deeply sceptical about the credability of forums like this for one simple reason. If I had methods capable of generating reliable returns I wouldn't be on an internet forum chatting about it, I'd be sat on a big yacht in the Bahamas, making millions on my laptop, and sipping Champagne while toned 18 yr old babes in bikinis rubbed oil into me... and each other.

The longer I try to make money trading the more deeply suspicious I become that actually, the only ones who do are those who are inside some special bubble where exists knowledge that will never be allowed out of said bubble, and those on the outisde will never be let in. There are people out there who make millions trading and they must have learned to do it somewhere, but where... and does anyone here actually make a living from trading... and if so, how?

Click to expand...

:|

Or one could enjoy a life in a small village near the mountains or the sea, living in peace and tranquility. Enjoying quality time spent with friends & family, having no financial worries. Learning new things each day, studying different cultures, languages, ideas, philosophies. Enjoying the exchange of views & thoughts with similar-minded trading individuals. Trying to live carbon-neutral. Immersing oneself in new hobbies, new environments. Away from the superficial life of superstars and exuberant riches who shine in front of the camera but whine behind it because the lack of privacy and personal happiness.

Once you discover that the rewards in trading or not only financially, perhaps then you'll find what you are looking for MitchT.

firewalker99 said:

Once you discover that the rewards in trading or not only financially, perhaps then you'll find what you are looking for MitchT.

Click to expand...

My point is that I am yet to find, or find anyone who has found, any rewards in trading, let alone sufficient rewards as to fund one's chosen lifestyle, be that hugging trees on the side of a Swiss mountain or enjoying the company of naughty young women on a big boat. We all want things that cost money - my purpose isn't to stimulate discussion as to the credibility of one person's choices compared to another's, but to ascertain precisely how that money can be obtained by trading, and if, in fact, anyone on this forum has actually succeeded in doing so.

MitchT said:

I've been registered here for quite some time. I thought I'd learn something useful here but it seems to be little more than load of people talking about new systems they've invented, or bought, which they reckon they'll clean-up with, and other people who can program the charting software backtesting said systems only to conclude that they don't work or that they do, but suffer too much drawdown to be worth the effort.

I am yet to find a discussion here that doesn't appear to contain lot of dead horses and a lot of 'would-be' traders flogging said horses with near-mechanical determination. I'm deeply sceptical about the credability of forums like this for one simple reason. If I had methods capable of generating reliable returns I wouldn't be on an internet forum chatting about it, I'd be sat on a big yacht in the Bahamas, making millions on my laptop, and sipping Champagne while toned 18 yr old babes in bikinis rubbed oil into me... and each other.

The longer I try to make money trading the more deeply suspicious I become that actually, the only ones who do are those who are inside some special bubble where exists knowledge that will never be allowed out of said bubble, and those on the outisde will never be let in. There are people out there who make millions trading and they must have learned to do it somewhere, but where... and does anyone here actually make a living from trading... and if so, how?

Click to expand...

Any profession or trade in which you become qualified will take a number of years before you earn a decent return. Trading the markets is no exception.

If you are unsuccessful you need to examine your methods & approach etc and analyse - there is a wealth of information on this forum alone as well as numerous other sites. It's all free! There are also many good books (and some not so good) for guidance. If at the end of this you can't crack it then either you haven't found the right way of learning OR possibly you just aint gonna cut the mustard - in which case go find something that you are good at.

I agree with you that there are some discussions on here which are of dubious quality (but that's only my opinion) but I have learned an unbelievable amount by listening to other people's views about which initially I was sceptical. The one thing you will find on this forum is mega-help from other traders. Why do they do it and not just get on with making even more money? - well, I'm a believer that not all human nature is selfish and most of us are basically decent people. If you want evidence try reading Trader Dante on Beginners thread.

Perhaps you are expecting too much too soon - in a former professional existence my initial training took 3 years and I wasn't considered to be really proficient until a couple of years after that. Look at Doctors / lawyers etc etc - it all takes years and lots of work and this assumes you have the aptitude in the first place.

On a personal level i have found that the first thing to examine in any walk of life when things don't go the way I'd like, is myself. As to the markets, my greatest sense of satisfaction comes from trading successfully and not the actual amount of money made (though it's a useful by-product).

Don't give up! (yet)

MitchT said:

My point is that I am yet to find, or find anyone who has found, any rewards in trading, let alone sufficient rewards as to fund one's chosen lifestyle, be that hugging trees on the side of a Swiss mountain or enjoying the company of naughty young women on a big boat. We all want things that cost money - my purpose isn't to stimulate discussion as to the credibility of one person's choices compared to another's, but to ascertain precisely how that money can be obtained by trading, and if, in fact, anyone on this forum has actually succeeded in doing so.

Click to expand...

If you don't know where to start, use the search function.

The information digged in this site is worth gold imho. Just for the sake of an example, there's even a thread shown on the main page where somebody explains his complete strategy. Then there's another thread, mentioned by 0007. But these are just recent examples. There's much more if you are willing to look.

[deleted comment]

MichT: Your central question is are there people on these boards that mnake a good living from trading? Undoubtedly yes.
Do all these people choose to share their trading knowledge on public forumes? No.
Do some unprofitable traders choose to share knowledge on open forums? Yes.
Do some profitable traders choose to share knowledge on forums? Yes.

How do you become profitable? How long have you got? Seriously though, it's about finding a market (s,) and a trading technique and style (s) that suits you and then perfecting it, in as much as that is ever possible. Like anything worthwhile, this is hard won and can take some time.

firewalker99 said:

If you don't know where to start, use the search function.

The information digged in this site is worth gold imho. Just for the sake of an example, there's even a thread shown on the main page where somebody explains his complete strategy. Then there's another thread, mentioned by 0007. But these are just recent examples. There's much more if you are willing to look.

Click to expand...

I've spent quite a few months searching and reading threads here. Some are pages and pages long and start promisingly enough, but after hours of reading amount to nothing. Some pointers in the direction of the good ones would be useful.

For the record, I've been spread betting for about four years and have just about broken even over that time. When I started I decided not to commit a lot of money, my thinking being that either A: trading is great so I don't need to commit a lot to make a lot, or B: trading is bad so I shouldn't commit a lot 'cause I'll lose it all. I started with £1,000 and have seen my balance as low as £434 and as high as £1,300. It's currently about £900. I'm not going to commit anthing bigger until I've found a way of generating consistent percentage returns. I accept that trades lose sometimes, but I need to see a definite long-term gain.

A Doctor friend of mine wanted to change his career and suggested to me that he was going to do 1hrs study and spread betting each evening after work for 12mths and see how we went with the intention of making the leap to being a full time trader then. I replied to him that If i studied medicine for 1hr each evening, could i then come and take over his practice? Ludicrous isn't it...How's he doing with his trading now? He's still a Doctor.

nice post bbmac ...

It's kind of obvious that if you trade then you must do it because you like making money. The same is true for any profession or job.

My own general experience is that the most successful trader (in any field) is usually someone that really understands their business and thrives on doing the best job possible.

Let's face it, if you want to live the lifestyle that you mentioned, then you could do that with almost any business if you had the skill and acumen. The majority of people cannot do that because it's not easy to create wealth.

Trading the markets is probably the toughest business one could choose for a career especially if they have little or no knowledge of the markets or instruments in which they are trading. What is important is attitude, enthusiasm and a small fortune to start off with!!

bbmac said:

A Doctor friend of mine wanted to change his career and suggested to me that he was going to do 1hrs study and spread betting each evening after work for 12mths and see how we went with the intention of making the leap to being a full time trader then. I replied to him that If i studied medicine for 1hr each evening, could i then come and take over his practice? Ludicrous isn't it...How's he doing with his trading now? He's still a Doctor.

Click to expand...

And therein lies the problem. On that basis one needs to leave the day job to have time to learn well enough to make the money... but I, for one, need the money before I can leave the day job.

You only work 8 hours a day. That's another 16 plus weekends to study how to trade.

You do realise that there are a hundred and one profitable trading methods? What will make you lose is summarised in my signature, below. You need to choose one strategy that suits your style and stick to it, test it thoroughly, get to understand its strengths and weaknesses, know when the conditions are best for it and when it doesn't work. It takes hard work and commitment, like anything.

As for wanting money, the irony is the more you become attached to money and the outcome of each trade, the harder it is to profit from trading.

Trading In The Zone (Mark Douglas) is a fantastic book...

As for me, I started out intraday trading (scalping) and that was fairly successful (doubled my pot), but it was hard work and the drawdowns were painful if money management and discipline was lacking. Now I tend to more swing trade because it suits my lifestyle. I can play games, surf the web, go climbing and kung fu training whenever I want and just check the market every now and then. That's why I'm on here a lot. And I pick up the occasional gem of info.

And as for the yacht and bronzed babes... no, thanks, I'm not gay but that lifestyle doesn't interest me.

MitchT said:

I've spent quite a few months searching and reading threads here. Some are pages and pages long and start promisingly enough, but after hours of reading amount to nothing. Some pointers in the direction of the good ones would be useful.

For the record, I've been spread betting for about four years and have just about broken even over that time. When I started I decided not to commit a lot of money, my thinking being that either A: trading is great so I don't need to commit a lot to make a lot, or B: trading is bad so I shouldn't commit a lot 'cause I'll lose it all. I started with £1,000 and have seen my balance as low as £434 and as high as £1,300. It's currently about £900. I'm not going to commit anthing bigger until I've found a way of generating consistent percentage returns. I accept that trades lose sometimes, but I need to see a definite long-term gain.

Click to expand...

Some threads are indeed too long and hard to dig through. Somebody should cut the threads down to the essential stuff, export it into a PDF file and save it for future reference.

Anyway, if you haven't lost all of your money in the past 4 years, than you are doing hell of a lot better than most aspiring traders do when they first start out.

So firstly, think about what it is you are trying to accomplish? How much time do you want to sit in front of your screen? Do you want to make a living of it or do you want to enjoy it as a recreational extra income? Do you have the time & effort to study, learn? What have you tried in the past, what kinds of strategies/methodologies/systems have you tried? There are so many different ways, that first you need to determine what it is you want out of it.

Then, you need to start thinking of an edge. A way to profit from the market in the long run, without having significant drawdowns. To develop an edge, you need to study charts, price, action, whichever suits you. That might be indicators, Gann, price patterns, volume, MA crossovers, the distance of the moon to the earth,... whatever. There must be dozens of threads on each of these subjects.

Perhaps forex is something for you. You don't want to leave your current job taking a dip in the big unknown, which is fine. Trading forex can be done 24 hours, using daily or hourly bars only requires you to watch the markets now and then. Or you could trade EOD, just watching the close and waiting for a signal. Whatever you do, it will require lots & lots of patience and discipline.

It's hard to know where you stand and what you know or don't know. There are lots of people out here willing to help & share information for free. There's even a chance to see traders post live trades. I doubt you'll find all of those things for free anywhere else.

journals

Might be an interesting thing to check out some of the journals people have opened.

For instance, this post shows the thinking process of somebody trying to develop a profitable strategy:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showpost.php?p=334324&postcount=139

The process

I believe I posted this elsewhere... can't find it now, so I just copied the text here instead of the link. It's general and probably won't help you right now. But unless you ask specific questions about a specific trading style/strategy there won't be much specific answers. As another member already mentioned, Trader_dantes excellent thread about "Making Money Trading" is also a very worthwile read.

(1) determine what you want out of trading: trade for hobby, a living,...
(2) determine a suitable timeframe for your style (can you sit on your hands for 4 hours doing nothing but watching the tape?)
(3) determine your long and short time goals (small consistent profits are large gains accompanied with equally large drawdowns?)
(4) try to analyze yourself (SWOT analysis)

Next you need to know what kind of trading suits you best
(5) mechanical or discretionary approach?
(6) price/volume / price patterns / indicators / pivot points / bollinger bands / candlestick analysis / a combination of any of the previous concepts...

After you determined that, you need to formulate a hypothesis and build something around that:
(7) formulate a hypothesis
(8) backtest and papertrade the hypothesis
(9) refine the rules of your hypothesis into a conceptual idea
(10) define the idea and the specifics surround it
(11) define the tactics you are going to employ (enter with market order? stop placement? target strategy?)
(12) go back to 8 and go through the process again to see what the performance of your system is, what is your win ratio, profit factor, maximum consecutive losses, maximum drawdown, average % gain per month,...

After you have written down the trading plan on paper, you can start to:
(13) papertrade your system once all the pieces are in place
(14) switch to real trading trading small size
(15) analyze yourself and your ability to follow the trading plan
...

Finally, after a while you will (hopefully) have gained the confidence to stick to the plan and execute only those trades that fit the plan.

MitchT said:

For the record, I've been spread betting

Click to expand...

And that may be your problem. Retitle your thread "Does anyone here actually make money spreadbetting?" and you may get closer to finding an answer to your quandary. That plus noting the "betting" part of spreadbetting.

There are plenty of profit-making threads here, many of which get little or no attention (most recently VSA Trader's thread). But if you insist on pedaling uphill, that's your choice, not the essential nature of trading itself.

Db

this is a video well worth watching about live trading the s&p today ... what an amazing trading day ...


it's not quite an oscar winner, but making calls like this in real-time is just freaky.

And so yes you can make money trading, but here is a demonstration of money management, a method and strict discipline when there is nuclear fallout all around you. Awesome!

You may have to watch a couple of the previous vids too understand some of what i said above.

MitchT said:

I've been registered here for quite some time. I thought I'd learn something useful here but it seems to be little more than load of people talking about new systems they've invented, or bought, which they reckon they'll clean-up with, and other people who can program the charting software backtesting said systems only to conclude that they don't work or that they do, but suffer too much drawdown to be worth the effort.

I am yet to find a discussion here that doesn't appear to contain lot of dead horses and a lot of 'would-be' traders flogging said horses with near-mechanical determination. I'm deeply sceptical about the credability of forums like this for one simple reason. If I had methods capable of generating reliable returns I wouldn't be on an internet forum chatting about it, I'd be sat on a big yacht in the Bahamas, making millions on my laptop, and sipping Champagne while toned 18 yr old babes in bikinis rubbed oil into me... and each other.

The longer I try to make money trading the more deeply suspicious I become that actually, the only ones who do are those who are inside some special bubble where exists knowledge that will never be allowed out of said bubble, and those on the outisde will never be let in. There are people out there who make millions trading and they must have learned to do it somewhere, but where... and does anyone here actually make a living from trading... and if so, how?

Click to expand...

I met a trader in Gerry's room about a year ago who is also a member of this forum ,, We use SKYP to speak every day and last Friday he had the best return on this capital for 6 years and to day he told me he had a return of 133% on this capital just in 3 month . His last 22 trades was win with one trade which he had to close due an error.

Trading is not an easy job but it is not an impossible job either,, To learn trading it takes more than few hours of speaking to a mentor,, It takes weeks and weeks to learn what the essence of successful trading is .

Now,, I post on this forum when i have few min to spare,, I donot read about people's strategy specially if they are part time spread betters. I think many people have big dreams with little funds gambling hoping to turn few hundered quid into thousands with little risk,,, This is not gonna happen unless you gamle,, Trading IMHO is not gambling but a Risky business which can be tamed and turned into a profitable business if the concept of risk is clear in trader's mind.

if you ever decided to become a serious trader and not a dreamer sit back and study risk ,,, try to understand the difference between gambling and risky business.. Risky business sounds bad but it really is not ,, it just means it involves risk which needs to be defined prior to opening a position .



Finally ,, I think traders should not give up on day trading and work and learn and never give up ,, if you give up because you lost X amount in short time this is nothing to do with the trading business,, you probably are not a qualified trader . There is a myth that 90% of the traders lose,, How many people who cannot swim get to shore if they were thrown in the middle of the sea or even a swimming pool ,, less than 10 % .


Grey1