Thursday, October 3, 2013

Why Most Traders Fail

Was reading at the reformed broker a few days ago. Some really good advice for investors or traders.

What I like best about the Larry Benedict chapter in Jack Schwager's Hedge Fund Market Wizards  book is that it opens with a story about repeated failure. Before becoming the uber-successful founder of Banyan Capital Management, Benedict failed and failed repeatedly but kept at it, using the proper discipline to assure that failed trades wouldn't knock him out of the game and never looking for a shortcut to make up for them.
Here he discusses why this is so important:
Why do you think you have been successful whereas so many traders fail?
Since I started in the business, I have seen a number of traders who ended up committing suicide or being homeless. The one trait they all shared was that they had a gambler's mentality. When they were losing, they were always looking for that one trade that would make it all back. I learned early on that you can't do that. This is a business where you have to work. That's what I do. Every day I make hundreds of transactions. I grind out the returns. If you look at my daily returns, you will see there are very few big up days.
 

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