3 of the Best Traders Alive

3 of the Best Traders Alive

As a day trader, one of the most crucial factors is the spread you pay. During active times,such the US and London session, the spread is typically around 0.1 to 0.5 pips (less than half a pip) with an ECN broker.

You can still pay all your bills, provide for your family, etc. But there is another side to money and emotions that plagues us traders, and that is a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. Lose too much of it while trading and you may be put off by the notion of risking money in financial markets altogether. Your account risk equates to 1 percent of $30,000, or $300.

Theoritically on 200k equity you should be able to make 80k in a month. Can you explain the structural limits of the market ?

If you only practice part-time, it may take a number of years to develop real consistency and attain the type of returns discussed below. Some traders might angle for a penny per share, like spread traders, while others need to see a larger profit before closing a position, like swing traders.

Most of my trading knowledge was built by observing and reading about every good trader I could find. Then, after about 6 years (I was with a full-time job), I implemented a strategy to generate consistent income from equities (80% winning days). Almost doubled my money until I got burnt out and lost control of my emotions. A bad trade w/ no stop started me on tilt, and in two weeks, I had managed to lose all profits. From that experience, I learned that good health is just as important as any trading strategy.

While 1 percent offers more safety, once you're consistently profitable, some traders use a 2 percent risk rule, risking 2 percent of their account value per trade. A middle ground would be only risking 1.5 percent or any other percentage below 2 percent.

Step 4: Start Trading

Everywhere in life we hit limits where it takes extreme work to move further, and so it is with day trading. We reach a point where making a bit more money requires what seems like an exponential amount of work, and so we get stuck (unless we find a different way of doing things).

I realize that options trading is not an ideal vehicle for day-trading (due to time-decay/expiration’s), however some people pull it off. I stumbled across your site (literally, from StumbleUpon) and you all have some excellent articles and sound advice.

• If we just look at males, the successful rate drops to 3.4% (10 out of 290…because 290 of the 300 total traders were males), and a 40% success rate for women (4 out of 10).
• It’s ridiculous to assume you’ll win all your trades and make 6% to 12% per day!
• It would take a long time to work up to carrying those sorts of positions, and even trading a few contracts can produce a good living.
• Most day traders don’t mind their own company haha (myself and many of my trading friends included)….as trading is often quite a solitary endeavor.

I very much agree that it takes lots of hard work and nerves of steel to make money thru day trading. Been doing it since almost 3 years now and it only this year that I have become consistent.

if we compare traders to baseball players it runs the whole gamut from Little Leaguers on up to the Babe Ruths of the game…at least I think so. What I’m curious is what kind of numbers do the Babe Ruths of our day trading world put up?

From what I’ve personally seen, this is accurate. While I traded for a day trading firm, about 10 people came in every couple months for trader training, or about 60 per year. For a five-year period that means about 300 people came to the trading firm and took (or at least started) the training program. Some traders I talked with think the actual number is higher; that is was closer to 400 people. While people are told they won’t be successful overnight, most new traders don’t actually believe that.

When i was younger, i was pretty easy going, bit of a partier. Thank you so much Cory for putting out an honest down to earth account of what it takes to be a successful trader, and much much more with your articles.

Some of the big bank brokers won’t fill orders for “odd lots,” for example if you put out an order for 326 shares they may only fill the 300 and the 26 shares are left pending. Some brokers also charge a slightly increased commission on odd lot orders. These issues are pretty rare these days, but the standard is still to trade in 100 share increments.

As soon as a trade signal occurs in real-time (at least while day trading) I take the signal. That means you always can see the bars prior, or a pattern to indicate the stop loss and entry, before getting into the trade. However, trading e.g. a 1 min chart it is difficult to calculate the positioning size (due to time constrain) as entry point is not always know before the 1 min bar elapsed. – Do you have suggestion here – trading a fixed amount can give you from 0,3% to 3% risk depending on volatility and time of the day the trade is made. Note that you can’t perpetually compound your account at these returns.

I was basically trading price action and had little discipline for entry/exit rules. I still traded with a SMALL account with stocks.

Beliefs and values also contribute to the personal ceiling. Money has never been my motivator for trading, rather my motivator is freedom. So I trade for a few months, and then usually take a few months off. Money isn’t the only things day traders seek…they may only day trade so they have the time to pursue other passions.