Thread by @theBuoyantMan

The three biggest lies in trading.

1. A lot of content on trading that you find on Youtube is utterly and absolutely worthless. More like 99%.

Google's job is to give you the best results - based on likes, comments, interactions, etc.

The people who do the search decide what gets ranked where. New traders searching for terms makes Youtube figure out what terms are searched more.

The Youtubers figure out what terms are searched more and create content based on those terms.

Most of the creators aren't creating content that's super valuable that you should watch, because that content will not be ranked by Google. Coz, Google only ranks the content that people are looking for.

The problem is that people don't know what to look for.

Anyone can be a Youtuber and create content. If you know how to do it right, you can snag content from investopedia, varsity, etc., and make videos. So, this doesn't help either.

So, 99% of the information you see on Youtube is false and unhelpful information.

So, the first lie is that you're going to learn to trade profitably using Youtube.

Use Youtube to learn the basics, concepts, etc. But it's not going to teach you how to trade. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you can change your focus to something productive.

Youtubers get views, create courses, sell courses to you, promise you superb wealth, and they get rich. But that's not in your best interest. Very few channels out there hold your best interest in their best interests.

2. All you need is a winning trading strategy to make money. This is one of the biggest lies, a pervasive mindset in the industry.

Academia teaches you that if you memorize certain things, processes, you repeat that to get certain results.

Trading is neither an art, nor science. Trading is both, and neither at the same time.

People want a strategy, they want steps for the strategy, and they want to backtest it and they want to trade the backtested system outright.

99% of these systems won't work in live trading. You can optimize data retroactively, but when new data comes in, such systems fall apart.

In this industry, vast majority of people fail. Brokers know that 97-98% people fail.

A lot of people start trading, a year in or year and a half in, they blow up, they give up. Whole new set of traders then come in. Every time there's a big market turn, new traders come in. Brokers love that.

You know who else love that? Trading educators.

In India, it's usually the ones who run workshops, seminars, webinars, sell you courses, and the worst of the lot sells you strategies/systems that simply don't work.
There may be good people who can teach you how to trade on youtube. There may be trading educators who are good.

That said, the vast majority of them can't teach you how to trade.

New traders who come in, they look for 1-2-3-4-5 step process, and they find someone to teach that to them.

They take a course, feel their life is about to change, they get emotionally involved, etc.

Then, what happens is that months in, most of these people watch themselves deeply discouraged about the prospect of becoming a half-decent trader.

You are continuously losing money. You have series of successful trades, series of losing trades take away all the gains and leave you frustrated. If you knew how to trade, had a system or algorithm or process that's working, you wouldn't be reading this.

The point is, all you can do is build your skills and grow as a trader. Some of you have been doing this for a year or two and you feel like it's been going on for so long without much progress.

A person goes to college, spend 4y to get a degree. They hope to make 50-60k per year when they graduate after 4 years of study stacked on top of their first 12 years of study.

What makes you think you can watch Youtube or take a course and make a million dollars a year?

This is the same as thinking you can take magic pills and naturally lose weight without putting much effort.

As a trader, you have to continuously learn and grow, add tools to your toolbox.

Markets are all about probabilities and you add these skills/tools to your toolbox. You'll eventually be able to figure out the probabilities of taking advantage of each situation in the markets. When such probabilities are massively in your favor, you take the trade.

I have seen enough traders/educators come and go on social media, twitter, and other platforms before this. You go check traderji or zerodha forum, you can find such traders who were stars couple of years and they were no longer to be found years after.

This is because many many traders on social media have the habit of showing only their winners and not showing their losers. Some are even manipulating the image of superb trading abilities by showing you continuous, exorbitant, consistent profits.

I am telling you. The most popular handles on Twitter today in trading, will vanish or at least completely remove themselves from the scene in 4-5 years. I won't take names, but they all have zealous following on Twitter. That was the case 5 yrs back. That'll be future case too.

If they were trading so well, why did they stop? They were talking about their winners, and not talking about their losers. One day they just drop out of the scene.

A very small percentage of traders may have systems and algos that work too. But they aren't on Youtube. They aren't putting that on Youtube. They are working for some prop/hedge fund somewhere making millions of dollars.

You aren't going to be able to take a 10-50k course and have access to that. You certainly aren't going to get your hands on such systems by paying 2000 per month for a supposedly algo platform, or by handing over your money to someone else who's dicey/sketchy with background.

You aren't going to quit your job and trade full time, undercapitalized. Psychologically this is the worst job ever. You can't put that kind of pressure on yourself and expect to perform well.

You're painting a picture, and I put a gun to your head and ask you to make it a masterpiece, the best painting ever in the world, otherwise you'd lose your life. What happens?

You can't paint very well. You can't flow. Your psychology will be off. You can't think clearly.

The minute you need to use the funds in your trading account for real life things like a mortgage, car payment, education, or helping a family member, this puts a massive pressure on you to perform, which is the worst thing about being a trader.

Trading for a living - it can be done. But, you have to have other cashflows and if trading is the only source of cashflow for you, the pressure you create for yourself is going to be massive and not going to allow you to flow properly as a trader.

So, if you want to trade for a living, for a long term, have multiple cashflows, and be sufficiently capitalized, have other businesses or other ways of making money if you can't draw from your trading account.

Learn how business works, learn how to do marketing, learn how to sell, and be a multi-dimensional person. Don't limit your life to just trading, and cultivate different social networks, and other ways of making money.

When your need to make money out of trading vanishes, that's when you will be able to trade profitably, and you will no longer let your psychology influence your trading results.
It's ironic, and counter-intuitive, but it will take the last bit of money you have to realize this.

This video is the sole inspiration for the thread.



I don't agree with few things said in this video, but I am not as experienced as him, so maybe 5-7 years down the road, I can pitch in my opinion on some of these things.