Jump to content

Welcome to the new Traders Laboratory! Please bear with us as we finish the migration over the next few days. If you find any issues, want to leave feedback, get in touch with us, or offer suggestions please post to the Support forum here.

  • Welcome Guests

    Welcome. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest which does not give you access to all the great features at Traders Laboratory such as interacting with members, access to all forums, downloading attachments, and eligibility to win free giveaways. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free. Create a FREE Traders Laboratory account here.

brownsfan019

What's easier to do - consistent profits or spikes?

What is easier to accomplish in your day-to-day trading  

19 members have voted

  1. 1. What is easier to accomplish in your day-to-day trading

    • Consistent profits
      10
    • Roller coaster rides on P&L
      9


Recommended Posts

Hopefully you guys can tell that I am really into the psychology of trading. I think it's much more important than any system you could possibly design. And I think the many threads here really highlight this if you look at what is really being asked...

 

With that being said, I have a question for everyone. I think there is a poll listed at the top of the thread.

 

The question is: What is easier to do - create consistent profits on a regular basis or create 'roller coaster' rides on your P&L?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Please clarify what you mean by 'roller coaster' rides on your P&L.

 

Larger swings up and down. Some days you can't believe how much you made and other days you aren't quite sure what happened.

 

In other words, is it easier to make a solid profit per day and be happy or go for larger dollars, up or down?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Consistent profit over the long run is definally much harder to achieve in my opinion.

 

wanting a spike in your account is very easy. Position yourself before any major eco report. You will have a roller coaster ride. This Fri's Employment report can give you the chance to do that.

 

 

weiwei

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest cooter

Yep, the roller coaster is quite easy. Especially intra-day. Make your daily goal or more in the morning, and give it away in the afternoon.

 

Gotta learn to quit when I'm still ahead, and enjoy the profits instead.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I find multi-day swing trading much easier and more profitable than scalping 10 ticks here and there during the day. I also find looking for a 40 point intraday move in YM a lot easier and more profitable than trying to find 4 10 point profits.

 

I haven't voted because your question seems loaded in favour of the first option. I still don't really understand what your question is getting at.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I find multi-day swing trading much easier and more profitable than scalping 10 ticks here and there during the day. I also find looking for a 40 point intraday move in YM a lot easier and more profitable than trying to find 4 10 point profits.

 

Interesting notouch!!

 

That flies in the face of active daytraders like myself, but it is something that I have looked at more and more actually.

 

It's very counter-intuitive actually - trade less, make more. Maybe even not trade during the regular session. That will mess with your mind! :rolleyes:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest cooter

 

wanting a spike in your account is very easy. Position yourself before any major eco report. You will have a roller coaster ride. This Fri's Employment report can give you the chance to do that.

 

 

weiwei

 

You want spikes? Excitement? An intense cardio workout?

 

Trade the 30 year bonds with SIZE when any econ report is out at 830 or 10am EST. Like placing a buy stop or sell stop a couple of ticks away from the bid/ask, with 25 or more cars.

 

If you don't blow out your account on a false stop spike just before the report, you could have a very healthy gain to show for it, plus a possible trip to the intensive care ward afterward in either case.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I haven't voted because your question seems loaded in favour of the first option. I still don't really understand what your question is getting at.

 

I didn't mean to do that. I was just curious as to what active traders find easier to do (not necessarily what they would like to be doing) - either you find it easier to make solid money each day/week/etc or easier to go on some swings up/down.

 

Again, not necessarily what you would WANT to be doing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It sound like you mean to ask is it easier to make profits by trading frequently looking for smaller profits or less frequently looking for a larger move. For me I've always found the latter much easier. Traditional candlestick analysis was never designed for scalping, nor was Market Profile or VSA. Longer term swing trading allows for more sober and less emotional trading.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In my opinion. swing trading is a lot of easier and more profitable if you really understand how the market works. scalp trading o little profits per day (if you really get them every single day) it is for traders than dont understand the whole sense of markets. for that reason they pick and go away quickly: fear and no control of the situation make them insecure. so they face profits like something hard to get but, actually they may think. uau! lucky smiled to me lets go quick before this turns all up against my position.

 

I think like this because I used to be a scalper before I had a better knoledge of whats going on in the market.

 

sorry if my thinking dont like to everybody

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

MX, I have seen day-trader made over 10K to 14K on a good day trading YM as a scalper on a consistent base, and I have seen him done it for over 2 years. So it is no luck, he can read market very well.

 

Basically, I disagree with your anology about scalper. Scalper can said the same thing about swing trader must bear the over night price shock. Like 2/27/2007 gap down. depends on one's position size, the draw down could be hugh, 30% -70% is not impossible. How about the limit up or down for several days.

 

The point being that every one has a style that fits him/her. Some is doing better at one style then other, that is all.

 

weiwei.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest cooter

Weiwei,

 

What type of size was day-trader scalping with? And for how many points per scalp?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

He scale in 5 at a time for up to 40 cars. most of time it is about 20 to 30 cars. He trades upto5 to 10 swing per day.

 

As far as how many points, he dose not have a set points for exit. he use MMath and order flow to see if he should stay for more or exit.

 

the reason that I know is he showed his P/L from his brokerage account to us to prove his points from time to time. and after 2 years trading with him, you know if he is for real or not.

 

weiwei.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Hopefully you guys can tell that I am really into the psychology of trading. I think it's much more important than any system you could possibly design. And I think the many threads here really highlight this if you look at what is really being asked...

 

With that being said, I have a question for everyone. I think there is a poll listed at the top of the thread.

 

The question is: What is easier to do - create consistent profits on a regular basis or create 'roller coaster' rides on your P&L?

 

Obviously, the answer is that the most difficult thing is to create constant profits. This should be the trader's main goal, without considering the amount of money he earns (at least not in the beginning). I agree the psychology is the most important element in trading and the human nature is the reason why most of the accounts look like a "roller coaster". Try to earn just few dollars for 3-4 months in a row, and grow from there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I find multi-day swing trading much easier and more profitable than scalping 10 ticks here and there during the day. I also find looking for a 40 point intraday move in YM a lot easier and more profitable than trying to find 4 10 point profits.

 

I haven't voted because your question seems loaded in favour of the first option. I still don't really understand what your question is getting at.

 

 

i like it. not that many have the patience to do that, with the view that there are more 10 point opportunities than 40 point ones. just goes to show, its all down to style.

 

on another point....

 

when i was a clerk before i started trading, there were 2 guys in my firm:

trader a. he had regular account swings day in day out. one day up 120k, then down 300k, then up 500k, down 200 etc.

trader b. most days he was up 2k, sometimes 5k. otherwise hed scratch, maybe lose 1k tops - that was rare.

 

trader a was the boss. hed always moan at trader b for not taking enough trades, not being aggressive enough etc.

 

guess which one survived and which one blew up.......

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

when i was a clerk before i started trading, there were 2 guys in my firm:

trader a. he had regular account swings day in day out. one day up 120k, then down 300k, then up 500k, down 200 etc.

trader b. most days he was up 2k, sometimes 5k. otherwise hed scratch, maybe lose 1k tops - that was rare.

 

trader a was the boss. hed always moan at trader b for not taking enough trades, not being aggressive enough etc.

 

guess which one survived and which one blew up.......

 

just throwing it out there for the New year cheer....:)

 

trader a - the boss blew up, but he went out swinging, moved on to bigger and better things, it was possibly Jon Corzine

trader b - consistently made small money, ended up being a customer of MFGlobal and now despite doing everything right (occasionally) wishes/wonders if he would do it differently

 

The broking/finance world is littered with very few traders.....but seems to have many mangers, many swingers and financial terrorists (in that they often blow up but at the time seem to be inspirational but are in fact frauds and cheats). The great advantage of using OPM - blowups often dont factor into the equation

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
just throwing it out there for the New year cheer....:)

 

trader a - the boss blew up, but he went out swinging, moved on to bigger and better things, it was possibly Jon Corzine

trader b - consistently made small money, ended up being a customer of MFGlobal and now despite doing everything right (occasionally) wishes/wonders if he would do it differently

 

The broking/finance world is littered with very few traders.....but seems to have many mangers, many swingers and financial terrorists (in that they often blow up but at the time seem to be inspirational but are in fact frauds and cheats). The great advantage of using OPM - blowups often dont factor into the equation

 

Youre very close its scary!

 

trader a did go on to trade OPM but also developed a bad coke, drink and hookers habit. no idea where he is now.

trader b did continue trading his own money and i hear hes doing ok. hes quite conservative anyway. i imagine youre right in that he wishes he could take bigger risks

 

id say trader b is a happier and more content person even if hes unlikely to be mega wealthy - hes happy just being wealthy after all these years

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

saw it many times before.

the joke was always if you go down at least go down swinging. Some idiot will think you are a big swinger and figure they are smart enough to employ you and then stop you before you next blowup. In the meantime they are thinking - hell it's not my money and in a lot of this game you dont get paid to make money you get paid to move large amounts of it around and hope you are not found out before the musical chairs stop.

 

I think this is also one reason why many supposed successful firm traders dont do that well if they venture out on their own, and why you have to trade to who you are.

( I am more in the trader b category - hence I sometimes have the regrets, but am also completely happy with how things are and not a coke abuser. :))

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This may be way too late, but the original poll question might as well say

 

Would you rather:

 

A: Eat a candy bar

 

B: Stick a fork in your eyeball

 

 

Maybe, a better question would be:

 

What is easier:

 

A: Steady small profits

B: Many small losses with occasional home-runs

 

:2c:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For me stability is better than a sudden jackpot. The trading process based on sudden huge swings looks like gambling - you can earn a lot or you can lose all your money. That's why my choice is the profit for about 3-5% monthly.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Topics

  • Posts

    • TDUP ThredUp stock, watch for a top of range breakout above 2.94 at https://stockconsultant.com/?TDUP
    • How long does it take to receive HFM's withdrawal via Skrill? less than 24H?
    • My wife Robin just wanted some groceries.   Simple enough.   She parked the car for fifteen minutes, and returned to find a huge scratch on the side.   Someone keyed her car.   To be clear, this isn’t just any car.   It’s a Cybertruck—Elon Musk's stainless-steel spaceship on wheels. She bought it back in 2021, before Musk became everyone's favorite villain or savior.   Someone saw it parked in a grocery lot and felt compelled to carve their hatred directly into the metal.   That's what happens when you stand out.   Nobody keys a beige minivan.   When you're polarizing, you're impossible to ignore. But the irony is: the more attention something has, the harder it is to find the truth about it.   What’s Elon Musk really thinking? What are his plans? What will happen with DOGE? Is he deserving of all of this adoration and hate? Hard to say.   Ideas work the same way.   Take tariffs, for example.   Tariffs have become the Cybertrucks of economic policy. People either love them or hate them. Even if they don’t understand what they are and how they work. (Most don’t.)   That’s why, in my latest podcast (link below), I wanted to explore the “in-between” truth about tariffs.   And like Cybertrucks, I guess my thoughts on tariffs are polarizing.   Greg Gutfield mentioned me on Fox News. Harvard professors hate me now. (I wonder if they also key Cybertrucks?)   But before I show you what I think about tariffs… I have to mention something.   We’re Headed to Austin, Texas This weekend, my team and I are headed to Austin. By now, you should probably know why.   Yes, SXSW is happening. But my team and I are doing something I think is even better.   We’re putting on a FREE event on “Tech’s Turning Point.”   AI, quantum, biotech, crypto, and more—it’s all on the table.   Just now, we posted a special webpage with the agenda.   Click here to check it out and add it to your calendar.   The Truth About Tariffs People love to panic about tariffs causing inflation.   They wave around the ghost of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff from the Great Depression like it’s Exhibit A proving tariffs equal economic collapse.   But let me pop this myth:   Tariffs don’t cause inflation. And no, I'm not crazy (despite what angry professors from Harvard or Stanford might tweet at me).   Here's the deal.   Inflation isn’t when just a couple of things become pricier. It’s when your entire shopping basket—eggs, shirts, Netflix subscriptions, bananas, everything—starts costing more because your money’s worth less.   Inflation means your dollars aren’t stretching as far as they used to.   Take the 1800s.   For nearly a century, 97% of America’s revenue came from tariffs. Income tax? Didn’t exist. And guess what inflation was? Basically zero. Maybe 1% a year.   The economy was booming, and tariffs funded nearly everything. So, why do people suddenly think tariffs cause inflation today?   Tariffs are taxes on imports, yes, but prices are set by supply and demand—not tariffs.   Let me give you a simple example.   Imagine fancy potato chips from Canada cost $10, and a 20% tariff pushes that to $12. Everyone panics—prices rose! Inflation!   Nope.   If I only have $100 to spend and the price of my favorite chips goes up, I either stop buying chips or I buy, say, fewer newspapers.   If everyone stops buying newspapers because they’re overspending on chips, newspapers lower their prices or go out of business.   Overall spending stays the same, and inflation doesn’t budge.   Three quick scenarios:   We buy pricier chips, but fewer other things: Inflation unchanged. Manufacturers shift to the U.S. to avoid tariffs: Inflation unchanged (and more jobs here). We stop buying fancy chips: Prices drop again. Inflation? Still unchanged. The only thing that actually causes inflation is printing money.   Between 2020 and 2022 alone, 40% of all money ever created in history appeared overnight.   That’s why inflation shot up afterward—not because of tariffs.   Back to tariffs today.   Still No Inflation Unlike the infamous Smoot-Hawley blanket tariff (imagine Oprah handing out tariffs: "You get a tariff, and you get a tariff!"), today's tariffs are strategic.   Trump slapped tariffs on chips from Taiwan because we shouldn’t rely on a single foreign supplier for vital tech components—especially if that supplier might get invaded.   Now Taiwan Semiconductor is investing $100 billion in American manufacturing.   Strategic win, no inflation.   Then there’s Canada and Mexico—our friendly neighbors with weirdly huge tariffs on things like milk and butter (299% tariff on butter—really, Canada?).   Trump’s not blanketing everything with tariffs; he’s pressuring trade partners to lower theirs.   If they do, everybody wins. If they don’t, well, then we have a strategic trade chess game—but still no inflation.   In short, tariffs are about strategy, security, and fairness—not inflation.   Yes, blanket tariffs from the Great Depression era were dumb. Obviously. Today's targeted tariffs? Smart.   Listen to the whole podcast to hear why I think this.   And by the way, if you see a Cybertruck, don’t key it. Robin doesn’t care about your politics; she just likes her weird truck.   Maybe read a good book, relax, and leave cars alone.   (And yes, nobody keys Volkswagens, even though they were basically created by Hitler. Strange world we live in.) Source: https://altucherconfidential.com/posts/the-truth-about-tariffs-busting-the-inflation-myth    Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/       
    • No, not if you are comparing apples to apples. What we call “poor” is obviously a pretty high bar but if you’re talking about like a total homeless shambling skexie in like San Fran then, no. The U.S.A. in not particularly kind to you. It is not an abuse so much as it is a sad relatively minor consequence of our optimism and industriousness.   What you consider rich changes with circumstances obviously. If you are genuinely poor in the U.S.A., you experience a quirky hodgepodge of unhelpful and/or abstract extreme lavishnesses while also being alienated from your social support network. It’s about the same as being a refugee. For a fraction of the ‘kindness’ available to you in non bio-available form, you could have simply stayed closer to your people and been MUCH better off.   It’s just a quirk of how we run the place and our values; we are more worried about interfering with people’s liberty and natural inclination to do for themselves than we are about no bums left behind. It is a slightly hurtful position and we know it; we are just scared to death of socialism cancer and we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is.   So, if you’re a bum; you got 5G, the ER will spend like $1,000,000 on you over a hangnail but then kick you out as soon as you’re “stabilized”, the logistics are surpremely efficient, you have total unchecked freedom of speech, real-estate, motels, and jobs are all natural healthy markets in perfect competition, you got compulsory three ‘R’’s, your military owns the sky, sea, space, night, information-space, and has the best hairdos, you can fill out paper and get all the stuff up to and including a Ph.D. Pretty much everything a very generous, eager, flawless go-getter with five minutes to spare would think you might need.   It’s worse. Our whole society is competitive and we do NOT value or make any kumbaya exception. The last kumbaya types we had werr the Shakers and they literally went extinct. Pueblo peoples are still around but they kind of don’t count since they were here before us. So basically, if you’re poor in the U.S.A., you are automatically a loser and a deadbeat too. You will be treated as such by anybody not specifically either paid to deal with you or shysters selling bejesus, Amway, and drugs. Plus, it ain’t safe out there. Not everybody uses muhfreedoms to lift their truck, people be thugging and bums are very vulnerable here. The history of a large mobile workforce means nobody has a village to go home to. Source: https://askdaddy.quora.com/Are-the-poor-people-in-the-United-States-the-richest-poor-people-in-the-world-6   Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/ 
    • TDUP ThredUp stock, watch for a top of range breakout above 2.94 at https://stockconsultant.com/?TDUP
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.