Raleigh Lee

What have you found to be the most important steps to becoming a consistently profitable trader?

Those who know to act do not speak; those who speak do not know to act.

Some studies have shown that a high percentage of chart patterns may be simply random lines on a piece of paper. Burton Malkiel in A Random Walk Down Wall Street cited an experiment his students participated in, constructing a hypothetical stock chart. Each day they flipped a coin, plotting heads as a 1/2-point gain and tails as a 1/2-point decline. The resulting chart from these random coin flips displayed all the classical patterns such as head and shoulder formations, flags, pennants, triangles, etc. There were even indications of cycles.

This is kind of a cross between pragmatic advice and memoir, but there's some good stuff in there. Try Trading As a Business by Charlie F. Wright.

I'm looking for a super-trader - a guru, if you will - that is not American and does not live in the United States. My purpose for this search is to interview him or her for my website. The reason for the criteria is that it seems that most of the literature focuses on American traders; but this is a global market, and I think people would be interested in master traders that are not featured in the traditional American market. This would be an audio or video interview via Skype at that person's convenience. The only other requirement is that the person speaks English and is an active, successful trader. I am not paying for the interview, but there are benefits to the interviewee. First of all, he or she will get exposure through a credible and respected source. I will also release the rights to the person I interview, so that he or she can do anything with the audio and/or video he or she wants. Thanks in advance for anybody's help.

Is it the accuracy of the method (% wins) that is impressive, or is it just that he is making more money than average? I ask because there are other ways to boost return other than winning more trades.

In my poll of 50 brokers, the most prevalent reason cited was under-capitalization / trading too big.

I don't think you change anything. Uncertainty is one of the mainstays of the market, and you have to learn to trade under the condition of constant uncertainty.

I have a question for anyone who has Ryan Jones' book entitled The Trading Game. My question is about a passage on page 86. In the third paragraph he says "After having acquired . . ." Can anyone tell me where he got the following numbers in that paragraph: $100,000 in profits / trading 20 contracts / 4 years? I have read this book thoroughly, and I cannot tie that paragraph to anything he discusses earlier. Any help would be much appreciated. :o

My favorite quote: "That that is, is." :doh:

Just remember this: When we look at a market from the perspective that anything can happen at any time (and that's the proper way to look at it), it's easy to see that every potential trader who is willing to express his or her belief about the future becomes a market variable. On a more personal level, this means that it takes only one other trader, anywhere in the world, to negate the positive potential of your trade. Put another way, it takes only one other trader to negate what you believe about what is high or what is low. That's all, only one!

I can show you a lot of strategies that win 90% of the time, but they don't make money. A good, solid system that has a positive expectation of .5 or better usually wins 45% - 65% of the time - no more.