Successful Daytraders
- Thread starter TraderRavi
- Start date
Good Read, spoiler alert is that this might hurt the working class 
Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job? I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.”
She smiled and said, “Wow. I have been unemployed a really long time. That’s weird… I like it!”
Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992), so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while. In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!”
It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that! Anything but that!”
It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself. There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.
Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.
Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working? Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.
This web site is an example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway. But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right? Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name). Everything after that was profit.
Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.
2. Limited experience.
You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain “experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.
The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over. You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat. In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?
Consider this. Which experience would you rather gain? The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money — or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again? Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience. That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?
3. Lifelong domestication.
Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.
Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?
How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?
Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?
Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…
4. Too many mouths to feed.
Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.
Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax system? Business owners and investors or employees?
You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.
What a generous person you are!
5. Way too risky.
Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.
Morons.
Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.
6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master? Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.” And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.
So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.
Who’s your daddy?
7. Begging for money.
When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?
Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?
If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”
8. An inbred social life.
Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends. An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay inside where it’s safe.
If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend? If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you? Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!
9. Loss of freedom.
It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.
As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.
God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on her desk! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!
Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun.”
10. Becoming a coward.
Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions — they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault. It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards. If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve become your master’s property.
When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become.
I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your courage. Never!
Still want a job?
If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part of the conditioning. But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all. This is only a reminder of what you already know. You can deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there. Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath.
If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.
Happily jobless
What’s the alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other means. Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time — so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it. One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it. It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy. Then you can buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change.
And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate even more value. So even your mistakes can be monetized.
Here are some free resources to help you get started:
The Courage To Live Consciously (article on how to transition to more meaningful work)
Podcast #006 – How to Make Money Without a Job (audio)
Podcast #009 – Kick-start Your Own Business (audio)
Podcast #014 – Embracing Your Passion (audio)
10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed (article)
How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) (article)
How to Make Money From Your Blog (article)
One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others. Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth that much. That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning. It’s absolute nonsense. As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it. There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.
All you really need is the courage to be yourself. Your real value is rooted in who you are, not what you do. The only thing you need actually do is express your real self to the world. You’ve been told all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway.
The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did: “No, please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke him right in the eyes.
You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.
Final thoughts
While I wouldn’t recommend starting an online business for everyone, for many people it’s one of the best ways to generate income without a job. It has certainly worked disgustingly well for me.
Source: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job? I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.”
She smiled and said, “Wow. I have been unemployed a really long time. That’s weird… I like it!”
Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992), so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while. In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!”
It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that! Anything but that!”
It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself. There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.
Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.
Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working? Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.
This web site is an example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway. But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right? Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name). Everything after that was profit.
Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.
2. Limited experience.
You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain “experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.
The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over. You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat. In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?
Consider this. Which experience would you rather gain? The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money — or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again? Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience. That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?
3. Lifelong domestication.
Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.
Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?
How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?
Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?
Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…
4. Too many mouths to feed.
Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.
Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax system? Business owners and investors or employees?
You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.
What a generous person you are!
5. Way too risky.
Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.
Morons.
Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.
6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master? Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.” And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.
So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.
Who’s your daddy?
7. Begging for money.
When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?
Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?
If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”
8. An inbred social life.
Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends. An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay inside where it’s safe.
If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend? If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you? Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!
9. Loss of freedom.
It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave.
As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.
God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on her desk! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training!
Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun.”
10. Becoming a coward.
Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions — they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault. It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards. If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve become your master’s property.
When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become.
I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your courage. Never!
Still want a job?
If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part of the conditioning. But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all. This is only a reminder of what you already know. You can deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there. Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath.
If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.
Happily jobless
What’s the alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other means. Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time — so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it. One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it. It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy. Then you can buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change.
And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate even more value. So even your mistakes can be monetized.
Here are some free resources to help you get started:
The Courage To Live Consciously (article on how to transition to more meaningful work)
Podcast #006 – How to Make Money Without a Job (audio)
Podcast #009 – Kick-start Your Own Business (audio)
Podcast #014 – Embracing Your Passion (audio)
10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed (article)
How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) (article)
How to Make Money From Your Blog (article)
One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others. Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth that much. That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning. It’s absolute nonsense. As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it. There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.
All you really need is the courage to be yourself. Your real value is rooted in who you are, not what you do. The only thing you need actually do is express your real self to the world. You’ve been told all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway.
The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did: “No, please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke him right in the eyes.
You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.
Final thoughts
While I wouldn’t recommend starting an online business for everyone, for many people it’s one of the best ways to generate income without a job. It has certainly worked disgustingly well for me.
Source: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
10 Common Trading Errors
Many novice and emerging stock traders charge full throttle into the markets with high profit expectations, but find out fairly quickly that making money consistently isn’t as easy as they expected. For some, this realization can be quite discouraging, particularly because there are few pursuits that fuel human emotion as significantly as trading. The prospects of making money often lure people into the trading arena, but the reality of losing money can be a quick deterrent.
In truth, most professional Wall Street traders have made many trading mistakes, according to trading experts. The key to their eventual success, however, is that the professionals study their mistakes and learn how to minimize them going forward. “It’s all right to make mistakes,” admits Dr. Alexander Elder, psychiatrist and author of Come Into My Trading Room. He adds, “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. But it’s absolutely unacceptable to repeat those mistakes.” Like most serious traders, Elder has made a significant number of errors in his trading career. “The wonderful thing about the stock market is that you always know when you’re right or wrong. If you’re losing money, then you’ve probably done something wrong. Eventually, if you learn not to repeat making the same errors, you’ll start running out of them.”
The following article takes a look at 10 of the most common mistakes made by active stock traders.
1. Little Preparation or Training
When you enter the market arena, you had better be prepared. However, few traders perform the necessary due diligence before moving headlong into the markets, says Robert Deel, CEO and trading strategist for Tradingschool.com. “If you are going to swim with the sharks, you better learn from the sharks,” Deel suggests. “The market is a food chain — the big fish eat the little fish.”
Deel says few books teach you everything you need to know about trading stocks, so he recommends stacking the odds in your favor by reading as many as possible. “You shouldn’t underestimate the time, dedication, and commitment it takes to be a successful trader. You can’t just walk into the market with a handful of money and expect to take money away from the professionals. If that’s the case, you’re gambling, not trading.”
Dr. Elder agrees that many people underestimate what it takes to be a profitable trader. Not having the benefit of a business school education or on-the-job training with a financial firm, Elder says it took him a long time to become a successful trader. “I had to overcome a huge disadvantage — a formal education,” he quips. Elder says that while a background in financial services would have been helpful for him, sometimes highly educated traders can tend to get too caught up in technical analysis. “The market doesn’t always work that way,” he says. “Markets have a high degree of volatility. How you function in an atmosphere of uncertainty can be much more valuable than the type of analysis you use.”
2. Being Too Emotional About Money
According to professionals, the reason many emerging traders fail to consistently earn profits is because of their perceptions of money. Trading expert Deel says that he gives all of his students a psychological test when they come to class. On the test, students are required to describe — in one word — what money means to them. Nine times out of 10, the answers are “safety,” “security” or “power,” he says. “Too many traders get so emotionally involved in their trades, long or short,” Deel points out. “If a trade goes against them, many feel they are losing safety. That’s why they tend to react so emotionally.”
Deel says that no one can properly prepare a trader for the emotional roller coaster of the stock market. “Many are afraid of being branded a loser,” he says. “To keep from being wrong, many people often will let a stock go negative against them. Let’s say they put a stop at 30. As it drops to 29, then 28, they sometimes decide to go against their original trading plan. To keep from selling at a loss, they suddenly decide to hold for the long term. That’s often a painful error.”
Dr. Elder agrees: “If you came into my trading room and sat across from me, you wouldn’t know if I was making $10,000 that day or losing $10,000. I don’t show that much emotion. I’m more concerned about the longterm outcomes of my trading. It’s more appropriate to look at your account at the end of the month or year, as opposed to your daily results.”
Fortunately, there are ways to desensitize one’s emotional connection to money. Elder and Deel both suggest that by trading smaller share sizes, such as 100 shares per trade, emerging traders can teach themselves to be less emotionally charged. Trading in smaller quantities can help minimize both the losses and the emotional distress that often comes with losing larger amounts of capital. Over time, as a trader becomes more successful, experts suggest slowly raising the share size — without raising your blood pressure — until a personal comfort zone is reached.
3. Lack of Recordkeeping
It’s understandable why traders become emotional when trading stocks. Elder says: “When you make a trade, everything is going up or down. It can feel like you have no control over what is happening. By the very nature of buying and selling, total strangers are giving you money or taking away money, and that can be very stressful.”
To help bring these emotions under your control, Elder recommends you keep a trading diary. “Every time you enter a trade, print out the chart and write down why you entered the trade, whether it was fundamental, technical, or a tip,” Elder says. “I write the entry on the left side and my exit on the right side.” He says the diary helps you achieve two goals. “The first is to make money. The second is to become a better trader. You might not succeed on the first goal, but you must absolutely succeed on the second goal. You should try to become a better trader after each trade.”
Elder believes keeping good records is essential. “Show me a trader with good records and I will show you a good trader. Even if you’re losing money little by little, you’re learning from your mistakes. I believe money management and recordkeeping are even more important than technical analysis — and I’m a guy who wrote two books on technical analysis.”
4. Anticipating Profits
Most traders don’t want to acknowledge that a trade could turn against them. They enter the market assuming they’ll be successful, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. It’s also common for emerging traders to use a calculator to predict how much they’ll make and how they’ll spend the unrealized profits!
Deel thinks that it’s dangerous to anticipate how much you’ll make in advance. “Let the market tell you what you are going to make. Anytime you say ‘I have to…’ you’re in for potential trouble. Remember: The market doesn’t care about you.”
He suggests that entering the market with a neutral attitude is a good approach. “My mantra: What is, is. If you’re in an uptrend, go long. If you’re in a downtrend, go short. If you’re overbought, wait for a reversal and go short. If you are oversold, wait for a reversal and go long.”
5. Blindly Following Mechanical Systems
A large percentage of traders use technology — in the form of online trading platforms that provide charting, research, and backtesting tools — to help them refine their strategies. A computer and software can provide important information about the technical and fundamental characteristics about stocks. However, many traders make the common mistake of relying too much on these tools without a full understanding of their capabilities.
“People think that the computer is a replacement for what is between the ears,” Deel says. “They think the box is going to give them the answer. A lot of people gravitate toward mechanical trading systems that are supposed to take over the trading for them.” He contends that if you don’t know how these trading signals are generated, then you are using software to think for you. “When you give up thinking and analyzing,” he says, “you are toast. If you are blindly following mechanical systems to buy and sell, it’s likely that you’re unsure of exactly what you’re doing.”
6. Not Learning How to Short
If you fail to learn how to utilize short trading strategies, then you have cut yourself out of a number of profitable trades, experts say. Many people think that shorting is un-American or too risky. However, by not learning know how to go short, you’re putting up a roadblock to one of the potential trading avenues you have to earn profits, particularly during a declining market.
Deel is adamant about shorting. “I believe it’s essential that traders learn how to short. It’s one of my first rules: Thou Shall Learn How to Short. Because of fear or ignorance, many Americans never learn to short in their lifetime. They’re afraid of unlimited risk. But shorting a stock is no more risky than going long.” He cautions that traders need to be very disciplined when shorting. “You can’t hang on. If the stock goes up, then you get out. It’s that simple.”
Dr. Elder concurs with Deel’s view on shorting. “The market is a two-way street, and the person who doesn’t short is missing a part of the game.” Because stocks tend to go down faster than they tend to go up, Elder says that shorting may be best suited for short-term time frames. For emerging traders looking to learn how to short, Elder suggests that traders find a stock that they believe has poor prospects and sell short no more than 100 shares. Minimizing the size of a trade can help ease a trader into the strategy of shorting without incurring excessive risk.
Editor’s note: Margin trading entails greater risk and is not suitable for all investors. Please assess your financial circumstances and risk tolerance prior to trading on margin.
7. Lack of Specialization
Many people are attracted to trading because they think it’s an easy vehicle for making money. However, there are several types of securities that can be traded in today’s markets, including stocks, options, commodities, futures, and currencies. For emerging traders, it can seem like a daunting task to learn the characteristics of each security type. Therefore, it’s often helpful to specialize. “When emerging traders don’t initially specialize in some segment of the markets,” Elder says, “they could be susceptible to over-engaging in whatever hot market segment comes along. Successful trading takes time, so it’s quite helpful to be dedicated and committed to a particular category.”
Most trading experts suggest that if you want to trade successfully, you need an edge. What do you know that will give you some degree of conviction? “If you don’t know the answer to this question,” he continues, “then you have no business trading. My answer: I know a few things about technical analysis because I wrote a few books on it. I can analyze charts with some degree of depth. I’ve been trained to recognize what is real and what is fantasy. And I’m extremely disciplined.”
8. Improper Timing
It’s very common for emerging traders to make timing mistakes. Quite often, a trader may have a good idea, but discovers that he or she bought the stock at an inopportune price. Timing a trade is never an exact science, but it’s important for traders to recognize that there are times when it might be prudent to lock in a profit or cut a loss.
“Smart people get in too early and beginners get in too late,” Elder says. “If you wait long enough, a stock may start to look like a good idea, but by then it’s often too late.” To illustrate this point, Elder said Google (GOOG) seemed like it would have been a good short when it’s share price recently dropped from 300 to 276, but the move had already been made. Waiting until a chart pattern has been fully established can often result in a missed opportunity.
According to Deel, smart traders should not look for just overbought or oversold conditions, but extreme overbought and oversold conditions. Taking advantage of extremes could help traders better manage their portfolio risk. However, there are no guarantees that the current trend for a stock in an extreme situation won’t continue.
In identifying trading opportunities, Deel uses a one-year time frame because there are a lot of data points. He is very conscious about timing his entry and exit points. “It’s those movements up and down that make money. I want to feel positive about a stock three days after I bought it. If not, something is wrong.”
9. Placing Improper Stops
Many traders incorrectly place stop orders, causing their positions to get stopped out too early and failing to capture much profit. It’s common for emerging traders to place stops according to a set percentage, such as 2%, or a set amount. How much a trader is willing to lose depends on his or her risk-tolerance.
Deel says that many traders have been given incorrect advice on placing stops. “You place stops according to what the market is telling you, such as support and resistance levels,” he says, “not according to profit goals. The market doesn’t care how much money you need to make.” Deel says that early in his career, he was constantly stopped out early, roughly 60% of the time in his estimation. “What I discovered was the market tends to move within a certain range under normal circumstances.”
Today, Deel no longer places stops according to a percentage amount or how much money he is willing to lose. “Now, when I place a stop, I let the stock’s behavior, or standard deviation, tell me where the best stop placements are. When I let the stock tell me where to place the stop, I get stopped out only about 20% of the time.”
Standard deviation is simply a range, both high and low, of a stock’s normal volatility based on a certain time period. Deel typically places three different stops using standard deviations. “Every stock has a specific standard deviation,” he says. “It’s as different as a fingerprint.” You can find the standard deviation by using Bollinger Bands, which give you stop losses and an upside price projection. Using Bollinger Bands, the stock price should be within the upper and lower ranges. “Ninety-five percent of all price activity falls within two standard deviations,” he says. He plots Bollinger Bands using an exponential calculation, rather than simple. “You can determine a stock’s high and low ranges and what it can move based on standard deviation and probabilities.”2
10. Not Calculating a Stock’s Risk-Reward Ratio
Many traders do not calculate the risk-reward ratio of a stock trade before they establish a position. A stock’s risk-reward ratio is the relationship between an investor’s desire for capital preservation at one end of the scale and a desire to maximize returns at the other end.
How do you determine a stock’s risk-reward profile? Through experience, traders tend to find their own comfort level for determining this ratio — there is no magic number. There are three common components of a stock’s risk-reward ratio: current stock price (a known); and a profit objective and stop exit price (both subjective). Calculating a profit objective and a stop exit for a trade often involves many factors, such as standard deviation or technical indicators, including Fibonnaci and moving averages.4
http://michaelsincere.com/10-common-trading-errors/
Many novice and emerging stock traders charge full throttle into the markets with high profit expectations, but find out fairly quickly that making money consistently isn’t as easy as they expected. For some, this realization can be quite discouraging, particularly because there are few pursuits that fuel human emotion as significantly as trading. The prospects of making money often lure people into the trading arena, but the reality of losing money can be a quick deterrent.
In truth, most professional Wall Street traders have made many trading mistakes, according to trading experts. The key to their eventual success, however, is that the professionals study their mistakes and learn how to minimize them going forward. “It’s all right to make mistakes,” admits Dr. Alexander Elder, psychiatrist and author of Come Into My Trading Room. He adds, “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. But it’s absolutely unacceptable to repeat those mistakes.” Like most serious traders, Elder has made a significant number of errors in his trading career. “The wonderful thing about the stock market is that you always know when you’re right or wrong. If you’re losing money, then you’ve probably done something wrong. Eventually, if you learn not to repeat making the same errors, you’ll start running out of them.”
The following article takes a look at 10 of the most common mistakes made by active stock traders.
1. Little Preparation or Training
When you enter the market arena, you had better be prepared. However, few traders perform the necessary due diligence before moving headlong into the markets, says Robert Deel, CEO and trading strategist for Tradingschool.com. “If you are going to swim with the sharks, you better learn from the sharks,” Deel suggests. “The market is a food chain — the big fish eat the little fish.”
Deel says few books teach you everything you need to know about trading stocks, so he recommends stacking the odds in your favor by reading as many as possible. “You shouldn’t underestimate the time, dedication, and commitment it takes to be a successful trader. You can’t just walk into the market with a handful of money and expect to take money away from the professionals. If that’s the case, you’re gambling, not trading.”
Dr. Elder agrees that many people underestimate what it takes to be a profitable trader. Not having the benefit of a business school education or on-the-job training with a financial firm, Elder says it took him a long time to become a successful trader. “I had to overcome a huge disadvantage — a formal education,” he quips. Elder says that while a background in financial services would have been helpful for him, sometimes highly educated traders can tend to get too caught up in technical analysis. “The market doesn’t always work that way,” he says. “Markets have a high degree of volatility. How you function in an atmosphere of uncertainty can be much more valuable than the type of analysis you use.”
2. Being Too Emotional About Money
According to professionals, the reason many emerging traders fail to consistently earn profits is because of their perceptions of money. Trading expert Deel says that he gives all of his students a psychological test when they come to class. On the test, students are required to describe — in one word — what money means to them. Nine times out of 10, the answers are “safety,” “security” or “power,” he says. “Too many traders get so emotionally involved in their trades, long or short,” Deel points out. “If a trade goes against them, many feel they are losing safety. That’s why they tend to react so emotionally.”
Deel says that no one can properly prepare a trader for the emotional roller coaster of the stock market. “Many are afraid of being branded a loser,” he says. “To keep from being wrong, many people often will let a stock go negative against them. Let’s say they put a stop at 30. As it drops to 29, then 28, they sometimes decide to go against their original trading plan. To keep from selling at a loss, they suddenly decide to hold for the long term. That’s often a painful error.”
Dr. Elder agrees: “If you came into my trading room and sat across from me, you wouldn’t know if I was making $10,000 that day or losing $10,000. I don’t show that much emotion. I’m more concerned about the longterm outcomes of my trading. It’s more appropriate to look at your account at the end of the month or year, as opposed to your daily results.”
Fortunately, there are ways to desensitize one’s emotional connection to money. Elder and Deel both suggest that by trading smaller share sizes, such as 100 shares per trade, emerging traders can teach themselves to be less emotionally charged. Trading in smaller quantities can help minimize both the losses and the emotional distress that often comes with losing larger amounts of capital. Over time, as a trader becomes more successful, experts suggest slowly raising the share size — without raising your blood pressure — until a personal comfort zone is reached.
3. Lack of Recordkeeping
It’s understandable why traders become emotional when trading stocks. Elder says: “When you make a trade, everything is going up or down. It can feel like you have no control over what is happening. By the very nature of buying and selling, total strangers are giving you money or taking away money, and that can be very stressful.”
To help bring these emotions under your control, Elder recommends you keep a trading diary. “Every time you enter a trade, print out the chart and write down why you entered the trade, whether it was fundamental, technical, or a tip,” Elder says. “I write the entry on the left side and my exit on the right side.” He says the diary helps you achieve two goals. “The first is to make money. The second is to become a better trader. You might not succeed on the first goal, but you must absolutely succeed on the second goal. You should try to become a better trader after each trade.”
Elder believes keeping good records is essential. “Show me a trader with good records and I will show you a good trader. Even if you’re losing money little by little, you’re learning from your mistakes. I believe money management and recordkeeping are even more important than technical analysis — and I’m a guy who wrote two books on technical analysis.”
4. Anticipating Profits
Most traders don’t want to acknowledge that a trade could turn against them. They enter the market assuming they’ll be successful, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. It’s also common for emerging traders to use a calculator to predict how much they’ll make and how they’ll spend the unrealized profits!
Deel thinks that it’s dangerous to anticipate how much you’ll make in advance. “Let the market tell you what you are going to make. Anytime you say ‘I have to…’ you’re in for potential trouble. Remember: The market doesn’t care about you.”
He suggests that entering the market with a neutral attitude is a good approach. “My mantra: What is, is. If you’re in an uptrend, go long. If you’re in a downtrend, go short. If you’re overbought, wait for a reversal and go short. If you are oversold, wait for a reversal and go long.”
5. Blindly Following Mechanical Systems
A large percentage of traders use technology — in the form of online trading platforms that provide charting, research, and backtesting tools — to help them refine their strategies. A computer and software can provide important information about the technical and fundamental characteristics about stocks. However, many traders make the common mistake of relying too much on these tools without a full understanding of their capabilities.
“People think that the computer is a replacement for what is between the ears,” Deel says. “They think the box is going to give them the answer. A lot of people gravitate toward mechanical trading systems that are supposed to take over the trading for them.” He contends that if you don’t know how these trading signals are generated, then you are using software to think for you. “When you give up thinking and analyzing,” he says, “you are toast. If you are blindly following mechanical systems to buy and sell, it’s likely that you’re unsure of exactly what you’re doing.”
6. Not Learning How to Short
If you fail to learn how to utilize short trading strategies, then you have cut yourself out of a number of profitable trades, experts say. Many people think that shorting is un-American or too risky. However, by not learning know how to go short, you’re putting up a roadblock to one of the potential trading avenues you have to earn profits, particularly during a declining market.
Deel is adamant about shorting. “I believe it’s essential that traders learn how to short. It’s one of my first rules: Thou Shall Learn How to Short. Because of fear or ignorance, many Americans never learn to short in their lifetime. They’re afraid of unlimited risk. But shorting a stock is no more risky than going long.” He cautions that traders need to be very disciplined when shorting. “You can’t hang on. If the stock goes up, then you get out. It’s that simple.”
Dr. Elder concurs with Deel’s view on shorting. “The market is a two-way street, and the person who doesn’t short is missing a part of the game.” Because stocks tend to go down faster than they tend to go up, Elder says that shorting may be best suited for short-term time frames. For emerging traders looking to learn how to short, Elder suggests that traders find a stock that they believe has poor prospects and sell short no more than 100 shares. Minimizing the size of a trade can help ease a trader into the strategy of shorting without incurring excessive risk.
Editor’s note: Margin trading entails greater risk and is not suitable for all investors. Please assess your financial circumstances and risk tolerance prior to trading on margin.
7. Lack of Specialization
Many people are attracted to trading because they think it’s an easy vehicle for making money. However, there are several types of securities that can be traded in today’s markets, including stocks, options, commodities, futures, and currencies. For emerging traders, it can seem like a daunting task to learn the characteristics of each security type. Therefore, it’s often helpful to specialize. “When emerging traders don’t initially specialize in some segment of the markets,” Elder says, “they could be susceptible to over-engaging in whatever hot market segment comes along. Successful trading takes time, so it’s quite helpful to be dedicated and committed to a particular category.”
Most trading experts suggest that if you want to trade successfully, you need an edge. What do you know that will give you some degree of conviction? “If you don’t know the answer to this question,” he continues, “then you have no business trading. My answer: I know a few things about technical analysis because I wrote a few books on it. I can analyze charts with some degree of depth. I’ve been trained to recognize what is real and what is fantasy. And I’m extremely disciplined.”
8. Improper Timing
It’s very common for emerging traders to make timing mistakes. Quite often, a trader may have a good idea, but discovers that he or she bought the stock at an inopportune price. Timing a trade is never an exact science, but it’s important for traders to recognize that there are times when it might be prudent to lock in a profit or cut a loss.
“Smart people get in too early and beginners get in too late,” Elder says. “If you wait long enough, a stock may start to look like a good idea, but by then it’s often too late.” To illustrate this point, Elder said Google (GOOG) seemed like it would have been a good short when it’s share price recently dropped from 300 to 276, but the move had already been made. Waiting until a chart pattern has been fully established can often result in a missed opportunity.
According to Deel, smart traders should not look for just overbought or oversold conditions, but extreme overbought and oversold conditions. Taking advantage of extremes could help traders better manage their portfolio risk. However, there are no guarantees that the current trend for a stock in an extreme situation won’t continue.
In identifying trading opportunities, Deel uses a one-year time frame because there are a lot of data points. He is very conscious about timing his entry and exit points. “It’s those movements up and down that make money. I want to feel positive about a stock three days after I bought it. If not, something is wrong.”
9. Placing Improper Stops
Many traders incorrectly place stop orders, causing their positions to get stopped out too early and failing to capture much profit. It’s common for emerging traders to place stops according to a set percentage, such as 2%, or a set amount. How much a trader is willing to lose depends on his or her risk-tolerance.
Deel says that many traders have been given incorrect advice on placing stops. “You place stops according to what the market is telling you, such as support and resistance levels,” he says, “not according to profit goals. The market doesn’t care how much money you need to make.” Deel says that early in his career, he was constantly stopped out early, roughly 60% of the time in his estimation. “What I discovered was the market tends to move within a certain range under normal circumstances.”
Today, Deel no longer places stops according to a percentage amount or how much money he is willing to lose. “Now, when I place a stop, I let the stock’s behavior, or standard deviation, tell me where the best stop placements are. When I let the stock tell me where to place the stop, I get stopped out only about 20% of the time.”
Standard deviation is simply a range, both high and low, of a stock’s normal volatility based on a certain time period. Deel typically places three different stops using standard deviations. “Every stock has a specific standard deviation,” he says. “It’s as different as a fingerprint.” You can find the standard deviation by using Bollinger Bands, which give you stop losses and an upside price projection. Using Bollinger Bands, the stock price should be within the upper and lower ranges. “Ninety-five percent of all price activity falls within two standard deviations,” he says. He plots Bollinger Bands using an exponential calculation, rather than simple. “You can determine a stock’s high and low ranges and what it can move based on standard deviation and probabilities.”2
10. Not Calculating a Stock’s Risk-Reward Ratio
Many traders do not calculate the risk-reward ratio of a stock trade before they establish a position. A stock’s risk-reward ratio is the relationship between an investor’s desire for capital preservation at one end of the scale and a desire to maximize returns at the other end.
How do you determine a stock’s risk-reward profile? Through experience, traders tend to find their own comfort level for determining this ratio — there is no magic number. There are three common components of a stock’s risk-reward ratio: current stock price (a known); and a profit objective and stop exit price (both subjective). Calculating a profit objective and a stop exit for a trade often involves many factors, such as standard deviation or technical indicators, including Fibonnaci and moving averages.4
http://michaelsincere.com/10-common-trading-errors/
No 5. Blindly Following Mechanical Systems.
People think that the computer is a replacement for what is between the ears :lol:
We can see many of here doing so....
This is the main reason most traders loose.
ultimate words...
If you are blindly following mechanical systems to buy and sell, it’s likely that you’re unsure of exactly what you’re doing.” “When you give up thinking and analyzing,” ... “you are toast.”
People think that the computer is a replacement for what is between the ears :lol:
We can see many of here doing so....
This is the main reason most traders loose.
ultimate words...
If you are blindly following mechanical systems to buy and sell, it’s likely that you’re unsure of exactly what you’re doing.” “When you give up thinking and analyzing,” ... “you are toast.”
Hello successful Day traders,
Please participate in this poll http://www.traderji.com/day-trading/100184-reliable-approach-trading.html#post1110946
some unique inputs are being asked here.
May I request you all to share your experiences by voting the poll.
Please participate in this poll http://www.traderji.com/day-trading/100184-reliable-approach-trading.html#post1110946
some unique inputs are being asked here.
May I request you all to share your experiences by voting the poll.
please check this for daytrading styles
http://www.traderji.com/general-trading-investing-chat/103869-only-45k-left.html
http://www.traderji.com/general-trading-investing-chat/103869-only-45k-left.html
Similar threads
-
-
-
-
Please post successful breakouts of TRIANGLE pattern
- Started by john302928
- Replies: 11
-
Trading for Living -- Successfully Completed one year as Full Time Trader- Started by amrutham
- Replies: 1,435