Eric,
I wonder if I could ask you how you feel interaction with other traders has shaped your own trading? Do you feel that your progress was enhanced by interaction with others, or do you feel that you would have reached the same conclusions on trading regardless?
While my trading would have been mostly the same, interaction with other traders has definitely helped my trading. I can think of several key areas where the interaction has helped:
1) Another trader (I forget his name - 7 years ago) pointed me in the right direction towards using statistical confidence intervals to provide a rigorous foundation on which to make trading decisions. I have found this to be very helpful over the years.
2) Another trader (thanks John) noticed and then pointed out to me how my trading was much better on the volatile days, and much more mediocre on the low volatility days. Until then, it had not clicked for me that this was clearly the case. Once identified, I introduced filters to combine items 1) and 2) in order to cease trading during times of low volatility which were statistically poor trading environments for my trading.
3) Another trader (thanks Bryan) helped me to lift the constraints on my expectations of what was possible in trading. Until then, I was very comfortable with my success and figured I was doing about as well as a daytrader had any right to expect. After being around him for a year or so, I realized that I wasn't as good as I thought I was (relative to him), which kicked in my competitive desire to further refine, expand and improve my trading. By doing this, my profitability greatly improved to levels that I never thought possible.
4) My daily interaction with other traders (in a small private chatroom) has brought me friendship and companionship that lessens the boredom of independent trading from home. In addition, I might sometimes get a heads-up on something that I would have otherwise missed, such as a premarket news event, stock halt, etc, which can occasionally assist in my trading.
-Eric |
