Hi Eric, and Everyone else:
What a wonderful reply. I am late to the discussion again due to my continuing spiral down into the world of law (I am nearing the end of my second year of law school, and working as a legal researcher) and of course I'm lost on the homefront (my two children, now of speaking age, are terrible savages who would make anyone long for the calm waters of the Nasdaq circa 1999).
As a part-time trader now I probably don't know WTF I am talking about. Nonetheless, I found your list of reasons why trading has become more difficult for many was perfectly pitched. I would only add to the "Elimination of the idiot" category that the rule change requiring a $25,000 account really sealed the fate of the newbie and accelerated the decline in prices. Given that we all know how hard it is for the dumb money crowd to set a stop or take a loss, it should be no surprise that a great number of these traders, undercapitalized to begin with, fell under the threshold and have never been heard from again, making the rest of us all the less inclined to grab that ridiculously-priced bottle of wine.
I also want to speak to your comment that all the traders you know are equally comfortable short or long. Initially I thought you were overstating a truism. (In law, the corollary is that the best lawyers can take either side of a case.) But I think what you know is that genuine traders are able to recognize, in any time-frame, in any type of market, what makes them "comfortable." This word choice is insightful because it doesn't imply that traders are so smart that they know how the market will react, or in what direction it will go, or that one must be counterintuitive and sell when one so wants to buy.
I've heard many traders talk about how in one particular trade, they felt so uncomfortable going in, yet it turned out great. But I don't know ANY old traders who say this is their everyday, year-in, year-out experience. The best traders I know seem to have something in common with the most happily married: they don't work hard at it, even when the hours pile up it's all good; they are just comfortable and everything works out fine.
Phil |
