Successful traders are very, very rare to find

Nope, people dont really understand the market. The banks are the bookie for some that are familiar with sports betting. The bookie doesn't make odds, the odds are calculated by the consensus opinion about the game. The bookie makes money on the spread per game. The liquidy providers are the bookie man in trading which includes banks and HFT funds like rennaissance and DEshaw. They make money on the spread. They make the market, they enable the big guys to get filled on their orders in an instant which used to take days when humans were liquidy providers. They have actually made the markets alot better. If you have a successful strategy, you don't have to worry too much about scale or spreads like two decades ago. They make sure that at any price an investor can get out of their position and not worry about finding a buyer. In the old days you will place an order to sell and will have to wait for a buyer to show up, they act as a man in the middle also known as the dealer.

As to trading like sports betting most games have inbuilt in them the consensus. Meaning you cant beat the game, the most likely event is always priced in the price or the quote. To be successful you have to find mispriced bets. i.e everyone believes team A will beat team B, but you think B will win. Because the consensus doesn't expect team B to win, the underdog's quotes are sometimes mispriced. The trap is most of the times the underdog indeed loses. Good luck being better than the collective sum total of the participants. My guess is that there are only a handful of people in the world that have the knowledge, experience and insight to be successful. Even among the professionals you will shocked at the amount of people who dont know what the heck they are doing.

Your odds of being successful in the stock market are alot higher than in purely speculative markets like commodities and currencies because there is no long term bias. If you are successful in the currencies markets realize that you are a rare and special breed. Not 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 but 1 in 10000. Good luck on your pursuits but alot of you guys should be careful and give yourself alternative careers. Good luck

I might add also that at some level you do not have to have the juice anymore Investment bankers do not trade at all, basically... they fill positions, provide liquidity - but some still see them as fortunetellers aka epic traders - but they are wonderful (sweet) talkers... The "older" trading is almost gone in IB business... Also there are some "insiders" Also once one comes to certain level/momentum to (corporate)raid or enjoy the economy of scale or live from interests/loans... the juice is not needed anymore... You would just have to avoid unluck.. but luck is not needed after certain level.. That is why I love banking... They live on commission... cold hard cash People think this is a joke... My dream is to TRADE myself enough to enter the where CONSTANT money is... MANAGEMENT FEE on AUM But will still trade on the side, just without the pressure... hard to maintain FIX (high)life at VAR income . Of course the best is best of all worlds... Receiving fix/passive income + actively trading... for BONUS/DREAM

nothing is impossible

Interesting you should mention Renaissance because I just finished The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution. It sounded to me like Renaissance isn't actually into HFT; apparently they're doing more statistical arbitrage type strategies. I'm not sure what DE Shaw is into... I've got a lot of respect for both firms, they're incredibly successful and have achieved the aspirations most traders hold.

I might have been wrong there, I take that out. They are actual traders, I read somewhere that they are also in HFT but Will have to dig that out.

Yep, I was surprised to read how varied Renaissance’s strategies have been. I read one guy was getting ahold of the New York Times early and trading based on that which has nothing to do with quantitative trading. lol

Ahem. OK this has taken a left-turn - you specifically said that banks don't manipulate the market, when there's several dozen settled and ongoing court cases about tier1 collusion and manipulation. In a 5 trillion dollar a day market.

We could get into microstructure about why 5 trillion is closer to $100m in real terms, or how risk is warehoused but the point is not only is it completely possible, it's been happening for over a couple of decades.

Go on pls Would love to hear more, just out of curiosity, won't argue, trust me

have you heard of George soros and how profitable his company has been before the company stepped down out of trading?

Lol for that clip alone.

I'll keep this brief but basically the market we see is determined by interbank market, not withstanding broker manipulation and crap execution. Nothing else matters.
There's only a handful of tier 1 banks, and since the big bang they have some key structural advantages. One is last look policy, where all quotes are tentative so they can change or reject orders as they see fit. Second is that they derisk big trades between themselves - hot potato trading - where say Barclays gets a $100m trade, they take on $5m risk and pass on $95m to say JP morgan and they take $5m and pass on $90m. etc etc. so the trade compounds into multiples of its original size. Not only that, but the liquidity and size of the FX market means its the ideal instrument to dump completely unrelated market risk, say that awkward $100m soybeans contract you don't want, and dump the exposure into FX too.

knowing all this may be helpful in knowing something useful to look out for. Merry Xmas

Much tnx man! Do you happen to know if big banks/players gone to vacation (stopped trading or dropped trading to like 20-25%) already (as of last/this week) since market has a very hard time "obeying"?

So yes, but the desks are still manned, just by the more junior traders. And most of the clients are winding up too.

But in real terms all this means is a change of volatility. Because volumes are down, either nothing happens at all, or it goes beserk when something does. However, the structure never changes - it should still obey

Tnx man, appreciated it Yea, I agree with you now.. seems it started to "obey" although going slowly.) I guess there were some disturbances at the end of last week, since some markets (unexpectedly - at least in my book) went totally in counter... Seems they are going where they are "suppose to" or you know... flipping burgers
We are all one trade away from that... If/in REAL trading anyway... I dream of a day when I would be on the BUY side of the market... basically doing nothing, collecting AUM % for "managing"... But yeah, that is true even for anaesthesiologists... "Anesthesia's the easiest job in the world until something goes wrong. It's 99% boredom and 1% scared-shitless panic... ...which we try to avoid." Coma (1978) I find GREAT analogies with trading (IB style one at least). But until I trade myself to respectable AUM... I must trade as we know it... meaning PRICE PREDICTION, everything else is... J.OFF But I envy the IB style "trading" They do provide good service and understand a great deal... even that the price can not be predicted (or at least that they can't unless they make it happen - by mistake) But that does not stop others (like us) from trying So see you on the other side, soon, I hope

and due to the nature of trading there is no book, teachings, etc that lead to real success, because if you have a powerul strategy and 10000 people trade it at the same time, this cannot work. Also people who succeed tend to keep it to themselves because it is so hard to find one very successful strategy
Also market adapts to strategies and people trading it, so making it public can call the death of it

Much sooner You would only need 10 people or less.. trying to press that EDGE too much... specially with 500:1... and a "good" capital... Market would figure it out sooner then British did the enigma Speaking of... the ones that do have the edge, not only do not publish it in any shape or form, but they are exploting it the same way as British exploited the enigma crack... so within the window of chance or within a reasonable standard deviation otherwise... I always try to explain to people, that one would (in theory) only need to be right 20TIMES (TP20) at let's say "famous" RR 1:1 (so SL20) to get to a BILLION out of 1000USD (entering 500:1 full position, compounding, yeah yeah, LOT limit my ass...). So as soon as I see someone preaching about Risk:Reward 1:1 TOPS... much better 1:4 or 1:10... or bla bla... and the same time they claim they can make many TP20s in a row, like (TP20) it's nothing... I know they are full of it OR they do not know what they are sitting on... In fact, I even have a Poll where 10 out of 51 people voted they can make 20+ TP20SL20 trades in a row, in a year.. So either they are FULL of MONEY or the other thing... (it starts with the S and has 4 words, not 3 The FX market, with all the wonderful tools.. is designed in a way.. that SOME poeple can PULL good amount of money for certain period of time BEFORE the market changes... If it would not.. we would have the first TRILLIONAIRe already... or the market(s) would crash... So you choose

My opinion people, if you do not agree, please pass, I am closing for the year slowly... so just venting out the last steam If anyone would (only) like to troll/argue... I am not the right person.. But anyone would ALSO like to make money, no matter how much they troll, argue, insult... they can contact me ASAP, if they can pull those TP20SL20 or (eurusd) or in other markets, in particular WTI and GOLD are of interest atm... We are trying to NAIL that n=12 (250USD->1mio) in CHEETAH thread... So welcome, IF you want to make money, I suspect, MANY are not here for that... as I was explaining it here...

BTW I do get out certain components, signals and explain why certain INTERNAL logic(s) of some trading system(s) are complete oximoron... I for sure would not let out my secret sauce (or "the juice"), assuming there is one (still tying to find out, verify - if we want to be honest to ourselves, first)... But people are still sending me private msg, specially if they find something we can relate.. Won't happen.. at least not until I make good money first... I made a mistake before, letting it out (some other edge) too soon and while I was happy doubling (relatively) money in certain timeframe.. Some people had an idea of putting BIG FUND in it, trying to push it through that EDGE.. and you can guess what happened very fast... I mean, if someone is pulling for example, 5-10k profits... that might still get some flags, if deposit is fraction of that... But if some people "attack" the market with like 50k USD BEFORE applying heavy leverage... or a FEW millions.. BEFORE target... I mean, some people think they would just DRY the market out and no one would notice I am sure BROKER would at least check someone pulling millions out of few k USD deposit.. Market adapts fast So I think the best thing we can all hope for... is either having smaller edge or big one but use it in moderation, longterm.. could be for life even, if the market doesn't change that much... Like few %/year or even 2-digit % return per year... Buy anything above 100%/year I believe has its shelflike... So I think if one is looking for GRANDSLAM HOMERUN returns... like 1000% or better factor x20, x100 or x1000 on the deposit.. I believe it is possible but not forever... at least not consistent... Because it seems some people would like DEPOSIT setups.. like "bank gives me % per year" "but I am looking for to make % per year trading". Yeah, forget it, wrong racket... At least if we are talking about "abnormal" returns.. Remember anything that gives 10%+/year, consistently.. is a default scam in FBIs book because they know what the chances are... Anyway, I think that the best we can hope for, if we want to NAIL IT... Is to find the (temp) edge.. and EXPLOIT IT AF... pull-out or withdraw in time and then play with SOME of the PROFITs.. without the pressure since the main PROFITs are already parked in lower risk investments.... That would be from me... I could be completely wrong but hey... you (any of you) sure you are not?

P.S. Knew a guy that found "the edge" (tech one)... doubling money per let's say TRADE.. and let's say.. those kind of trades happened like 1-3times per week.. So he went NUTs... Extrapolated the future PROFITs (thinking it would last FOREVER).. and went to shopping spree... for MONTHs! And then it failed... Him bragging about it didn't help that either... I mean, I am 90% sure if he would shut his mouth... he would be easily having millions out of it.. But he bragged af... (he hold it for a month then started to "teach" others.. showing his big brains - egotrip was the only objective, believe me)... word got out, month later a big fund tried to exploit the edge with millions (before) leverage... and yeah... you can imagine what happened... I was telling him to Shut his mouth until at least certain profits are made... and also to "hide" the strategies in other trades.. but he just went dOUBLING/trade and yeah... if you get to x30 on the DEPOSIT within 1-2months... Broker might not notice it UNTILL there is not BIG money and/or consistent x30 on the deposit WITHDRAWALS ... I mean, people actually thought they would deposit 1mio, put it through 200:1 leverage and withdrawing profits weekly... And that on TECH advantage, like exploit exploit, not real price prediction... Yeah man... It could happen, no doubt, but really? And if so, for how long?

How very true....

An interesting thought...

I think it's kind of important to define what success actually is? What is success to everyone? I rarely post, but today someone said to success if if you gave 10,000 trades & you're winning then you're successful...is this success??

There might not be any secret. Those that are successful are not so because of some fancy method. They have just acquired a mental framework about the markets that the rest haven't. They have simply learned to lose, that is the primary skill of trading. The better you are at that, the better your performance will be.


First class loser ------------------------> GREAT TRADER

Second class loser----------------------> STRUGGLING TRADER

Third class loser------------------------> SUCKER!!!

Good luck.

Oh, it's really hard to define "success". Everyone will have a different perspective, you and I will have content of different success.
And success or not is in your mind.