I think the "information advantage" you speak of is only pertinent if one is managing relatively large amounts of capital -- where even taking a meaningful position would have an impact on the market itself. Extensive research resources, informational contacts, and the general desire for others to provide "useful" knowledge in an attempt to curry favor from anyone running such large numbers, all this is part of a different game that will remain alien for 99.9% of ET readers. For the individual discretionary trader however, I don't see how one would need to add/develop "informational advantages" to remain successful in the long run. The whole point of discretionary trading to me is adaptation, in every sense of the word, so if one can achieve success with nothing but a quote screen now, there should be no reason why he or she would suddenly need other "advantages" years out.
You are coming from a glass half empty approach - why do you need an advantage? Why do you need to 'beat' others? Be creative. Gates and Buffett didnt have 'advantages' over others. They had skills and took risks.
ehehehe you know what just occurred to me. if we were all to post our financial statements, I think we would all get such a big surprise out of it. few would be making far more than we think and many would be making far less than we think just a thought
Bold statement to say that a consistently profitable traders' success is not due to luck? I have no proof of anything but my own journey. I can tell you with almost certainty that almost everything I do can be quantified. There is a certain artistry in my trading that is probably required. It nags at me that it is so. But as a scientist I believe that the "artistry" can probably be mechanized, and in theory is an illusion [from lack of complete knowledge or deeper anaylsis]. If I am able to remove or at least quantify the artistry from my trading, I will have a 100% mechanical system that I can program [albeit that will require some artistic programming ]. If instead it turns out that I have come to a point where any entry is possible, and that it is only my trading experience [which may not be able to be reduced to mechanistic laws,] that it turns out that it is me that is what makes my trading profitable and not the mathematical rules that I use to make trades, then that realization will send philosophical repercussions through my entire belief system and you may find me in church the following week after that discovery. nitro
Some persist in the delusion that their winnings can only be losses of some other individuals who have to be losers (eg ET losers). Is it that their winnings don't taste good enough and so they need to come from ET losing members? Index futures are a derivative of actual exchange stock indices. Given that index futures are zero sum games, then if every trading individual was a winner then arbitrage would prevent the index becoming badly distorted or tracking way differently to the actual index. But aside from that, there are different classes of users including hedgers who don't need any profit to come from their hedge (ie index futures) if instead it is arising from the stocks they are hedging. Of course the myth will still stay live and well that only the speculative losses of individuals sustain the gains of winning players. Such irrationality!
That is essentially true, but it is unfair because it turns the problem on it's head, and people won't understand what you said until they do, so it probably doesn't help. I just realized that there are two parts of my personality giving responses to these threads. There is the nitro the artist, and nitro the scientist. I should split my handle into three handles: 1) nitro for those posts where neither artist nor scientist dominates the post. 2) nitroMystic for those posts where I am on the fringe of knowledge and should be treated as "dubious." 3) nitroScientist for those posts where anything I say can be duplicated by anyone else on ET by running the same experiment on the same data. Or maybe I should do away with the nitro handle altogether and just use nitroMystic and nitroScientist as appropriate, and only come back to nitro when I have a Unified Field Theory of myself nitro
If you guys that are struggling, only knew how easy it really is... Technique and methodology-wise, anyway. But as has been mentioned, the psych part is the tough one. Good trading to all.
Do you trade? or just took a webinar from the CBOT site and think you can make your millions next year or two? This is worth reading it again:
From talking with someone else here, I understand that you're a wannabe mentor that doesn't even trade with real money. All these talks of goodness and wellness are all good and great only if you can POST a real P/L statement for the last three years. Or at least a year would be fine. The lesson to be learned from these well wishers around here is that.. they are either a guru, publisher, author... and they all have an ulterior motive in you STICKING around and TRADING.