Every new trader should indeed read Mark Douglas as punklesam recommends.
New traders - SPAM or no SPAM, punklesam is absolutely right. It is pretty widely accepted that most people who come to trading are forced out due to losses. Or at least not having made the gains they thought they would, which is not the same thing. The common thread though is psychology.
The market does not do the unexpected 90% of the time. And certainly not with such force as to instantly wipe out the traders who were on the wrong side of the move. So the problem is not the market.
The problem is mostly mental, most novices have unrealistic expectations or lack the mental fortitude to develop, test and stick with a systematic method, or are unprepared for losses, or have an unconscious block.
The unconscious blocks can be the worst and most difficult to identify and confront. Many of us are brought up with attitudes to hard work, honest effort, gainful employment, money, job success, earned / unearned income and all that baggage which are incompatible with successful trading. So traders sometimes sabotage their own efforts due to some kind of guilt / mental mismatch between what they want and how they are getting it. These inner conflicts can be deep and hard to spotlight.
As an example, we will often hear, as a term of praise or professional recognition, the phrase 'full-time trader'. As if that were a good thing! But really, which is better, being a successful 30-minute a day trader or being an exactly equally successful, 10-hour a day trader? For the same money, surely, the less time you put in to earn it the better? But in reality, we can sometimes be so bound by the self-recognition that comes from a job / profession that we see trading as a job-substitute. Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story. If you need to use it as a means to re-define yourself, whether as a market player or trader or hot-shot gambler or entrepreneur or whatever, you are trading outside the true reality. You might just as well make up charts out of your head.
Every new trader should indeed read Mark Douglas as punklesam recommends.
New traders - SPAM or no SPAM, punklesam is absolutely right. It is pretty widely accepted that most people who come to trading are forced out due to losses. Or at least not having made the gains they thought they would, which is not the same thing. The common thread though is psychology.
The market does not do the unexpected 90% of the time. And certainly not with such force as to instantly wipe out the traders who were on the wrong side of the move. So the problem is not the market.
The problem is mostly mental, most novices have unrealistic expectations or lack the mental fortitude to develop, test and stick with a systematic method, or are unprepared for losses, or have an unconscious block.
The unconscious blocks can be the worst and most difficult to identify and confront. Many of us are brought up with attitudes to hard work, honest effort, gainful employment, money, job success, earned / unearned income and all that baggage which are incompatible with successful trading. So traders sometimes sabotage their own efforts due to some kind of guilt / mental mismatch between what they want and how they are getting it. These inner conflicts can be deep and hard to spotlight.
As an example, we will often hear, as a term of praise or professional recognition, the phrase 'full-time trader'. As if that were a good thing! But really, which is better, being a successful 30-minute a day trader or being an exactly equally successful, 10-hour a day trader? For the same money, surely, the less time you put in to earn it the better? But in reality, we can sometimes be so bound by the self-recognition that comes from a job / profession that we see trading as a job-substitute. Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story. If you need to use it as a means to re-define yourself, whether as a market player or trader or hot-shot gambler or entrepreneur or whatever, you are trading outside the true reality. You might just as well make up charts out of your head.
Every new trader should indeed read Mark Douglas as punklesam recommends.
The unconscious blocks can be the worst and most difficult to identify and confront. Many of us are brought up with attitudes to hard work, honest effort, gainful employment, money, job success, earned / unearned income and all that baggage which are incompatible with successful trading. So traders sometimes sabotage their own efforts due to some kind of guilt / mental mismatch between what they want and how they are getting it. These inner conflicts can be deep and hard to spotlight.
As an example, we will often hear, as a term of praise or professional recognition, the phrase 'full-time trader'. As if that were a good thing! But really, which is better, being a successful 30-minute a day trader or being an exactly equally successful, 10-hour a day trader? For the same money, surely, the less time you put in to earn it the better? But in reality, we can sometimes be so bound by the self-recognition that comes from a job / profession that we see trading as a job-substitute. Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story. If you need to use it as a means to re-define yourself, whether as a market player or trader or hot-shot gambler or entrepreneur or whatever, you are trading outside the true reality. You might just as well make up charts out of your head.
Every new trader should indeed read Mark Douglas as punklesam recommends.
"Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story".
What is a job, then? I personally don't agree with this part of your post (or most of the above copy - of course, that doesn't mean you're not right). I think trading is a viable occupation like any other and it takes hard work to get it right - it's not 'easy money'. If it were, we'd all be rich. Yes, it's not 'labour' but then neither are a lot of occupations and there are many that seem 'easy' when in fact it's just the opposite like professional sportsmen, singers/actors, advertising execs, artists, etc. I'm sure they don't sit around feeling guilty that they're not 'working hard enough' due to the perceivement of others.
Trading may not be a 'job' to you but if you were being paid to do it (and get it right) every day for 8-10 hours a day, would you still have the same philosophy?
Yes, a trader works with money - it's their medium or their environment - but it's the same for anyone working in the financial sector. Anyway, just my opinion.
"is this it?"
Huge amount of information processed to get to that sentence
Andy
One other quick point, this "90% fail" contention needs re-defining IMHO. I'd suggest that 90% of folk do fail but I wonder how those percentages change if you really dedicate yourself to trading? Do perhaps 30% finally succeed if they totally commit/immerse themselves into their chosen industry? As a head count I'd hazard a guess (based on the trade laws of probability) that more than 30% of the folk I 'talk' with on here have success to one degree of another, maybe 50%? Perhaps 90% of folk who take a punt do fail but I'd be very surprised if 90% of folk who have totally commited themselves to this new job ( in the the way I have over the past 18 months) fail...
"Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story".
What is a job, then?
A job is so much more than a means to make money. It can define every atom of some people's being and their whole way of thinking, to the extreme point where its designation goes through job to trade to profession to career to vocation etc.. it differs at the fundamental level whereby a person's time is sold for reward, and the reward increases in proportion at first to their level of knowledge, later to their acceptance of responsibility. Trading brings a rising reward for increasing risk whereas another characterising objective of a job is the off-loading of risk onto another party.
Trading and a job are hardly comparable in fundamental nature.
"Trading is an activity to generate money, end of story".
I think that is correct, there should be no other motif behind it and your intent