Trading by myself - how feasible is it to make a living at it?

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Variance can affect a trader worse than it affects a poker player.


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This is a huge understatement. I don't think even a lifetime of trading is anywhere near a reasonable sample size, simply because certain styles/strategies work for a few decades, then stop working. There's an element of this in poker as well, but you can choose games and idiots are bound to donate.

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Like poker, a huge portion of the people who really profit off of it are the ones who stand on the sidelines: brokers, option writers, broadcasters, etc.

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Option writers aren't exactly on the sidelines.

[pig4bill]

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When you're in a tournament and turn the nut flush on an unpaired board and your opponent puts you all in, you call almost every time. When he rivers a boat and knocks you out short of the money, there's nothing you can do to recover anything. You're out and done and no research beforehand can help you. That very seldom happens in the stock market, and happens all too often in poker

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But this always happens. Everything in your system tells you to be bullish and your set-ups are screaming 'buy' so you buy. There are 1001 things that can go wrong that you have no control over that can turn that trade into a loss.

You can control your risk, your entries and your exits. What happens in between is often upto Mr. Market.

Any single trade is pretty much a coin-flip as far as the outcome. Some sytems more, some less. It's the +EV and your risk management that's important as it was in your flush vs. boat hand.

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I guess you're talking about T/A based methods. The trades I do are mostly information-based. If you've done your work correctly, any spikes are just noise, or actually opportunities to get a better price, but the stock will eventually go in your direction. The variable is how far, whether it will reach your target, but you won't get blown out of the trade, like you would a poker pot. Even if you're only doing T/A based trades, you can make an effort to find out what's moving it against you. Stocks don't move by themselves. There's something you can do about your situation. With poker, you are at the mercy of the cards in many situations.