[nakachalet]

Specifically, if a trader pulled the trigger 30+ times in the opening hour....

would or could it be considered in your learned experiences as excessive and/or lunatic and/or moronic and/or suicidal.... and/or all the above combined together....?

here is the doc from his trade this morning on tuesday, august 30, 2011, USA east coast time zone....

what do you think traders....?

just how excessive is excessive in your experiences?

[Tams]

Originally Posted by nakachalet »

Specifically, if a trader pulled the trigger 30+ times in the opening hour....

would or could it be considered in your learned experiences as excessive and/or lunatic and/or moronic and/or suicidal.... and/or all the above combined together....?

here is the doc from his trade this morning on tuesday, august 30, 2011, USA east coast time zone....

what do you think traders....?

just how excessive is excessive in your experiences? :

:

any trade that makes more than the commission,
and with the profit more than the drawdown,
is a good trade.

No good trades are excessive.

[brownsfan019]

I'm with Tams on this one. At one point I would have said that's crazy, but in the end, all that matters is whether $$$ came into your account or left. How a trader does it is up to them. If the trades make $$$ when it counts (real-time) that's all that matters. We've all seen plenty of these wonderful looking backtests, but it's gotta count when real money is on the line.

Obviously if trading a lot you'd want to get your commissions down as much as possible - through your broker and looking at leasing/buying a seat as well.

But even a $5 round trip charge on the ES is covered by making ONE tick. One ES tick = $12.50 so as long as your win/loss ratio works, you could make money going for 1 tick on the ES even at retail commissions. I don't recommend that, but the numbers could work.

[electroniclocal]

On the floor, we tried to hold our costs to less than 25% of profits. That's still my "rule of thimb" for a very active trader. Remember, its you taking the risk, not the broker.

Having said that, increasing the average trade profit is the road to better earnings.

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

I'm with Tams on this one. At one point I would have said that's crazy, but in the end, all that matters is whether $$$ came into your account or left. How a trader does it is up to them. If the trades make $$$ when it counts (real-time) that's all that matters. We've all seen plenty of these wonderful looking backtests, but it's gotta count when real money is on the line.

Obviously if trading a lot you'd want to get your commissions down as much as possible - through your broker and looking at leasing/buying a seat as well.

But even a $5 round trip charge on the ES is covered by making ONE tick. One ES tick = $12.50 so as long as your win/loss ratio works, you could make money going for 1 tick on the ES even at retail commissions. I don't recommend that, but the numbers could work.

[SIUYA]

agree with all of the above.
if there is profit in it then great, if its mad punting with no really strategy then its going to make the broker rich.

Now times have changed, but about 6-7 years ago just as high frequency trading was getting going, and option market volumes were picking up, one of the major clearing brokers let us in on a few numbers of their average clients.... They estimated that for every $1 made by the market making firms, about 45 cents went in costs to clearing firms, exchanges and brokers. this was the average, (and also did not necessarily mean the firms made money - but lets assume they did as a basic rule as they were market makers with the theoretical option pricing as their edge, based on what the guy told us). We at the time averaged about 20c cost for every $1 profit - I never wanted to be too high turnover.
So for high turn over market making firms thats what they were doing then....if you are worse than this with no edge it might be worth thinking again

[wrbtrader]

It's very simple...if these are trades that are not valid trade signals from your trading plan, it's overtrading (excessive). Therefore, it's never the number of trades you take. Thus, if you took 300 trades in the opening hour and all were valid trade signals...it's not overtrading (excessive). Just the same, if you only had 3 valid trade signals and you took 4 trades...that's overtrading (excessive). Yet, on the flip side, if you had 3 valid trade signals and you only traded 2 of those 3 valid trade signals, that's undertrading (not trading all trade signals while actively trading). Undertrading can be just as damaging as overtrading. For example, the missed trades could be the ones that would have made you profitable for the day.

With that said, there's a trader psychology issue. If you mentally can't handle taking any number of trades (e.g. 3, 5, 15, 50, 100 or whatever) regardless if they are valid trade signals or not...that too is overtrading (excessive). Simply, if you feel burnt out, blood pressure shot through the roof, emotionally ruined after a trading day regardless to the number of trades taken, that too is overtrading (excessive) and you really do need to quickly learn to control that to prevent having a short-lived trading career.

Originally Posted by nakachalet »

Specifically, if a trader pulled the trigger 30+ times in the opening hour....

would or could it be considered in your learned experiences as excessive and/or lunatic and/or moronic and/or suicidal.... and/or all the above combined together....?

here is the doc from his trade this morning on tuesday, august 30, 2011, USA east coast time zone....

what do you think traders....?

just how excessive is excessive in your experiences?

[zdo]

OP,
Depends on that individual trader's true nature...
Equivalent question would be something like
"is that bird flying too often?"

zdo

ps great post, wrbtrader

[Tams]

Originally Posted by zdo »

OP,
Depends on that individual trader's true nature...
Equivalent question would be something like
"is that bird flying too often?"

zdo

ps great post, wrbtrader

if that bird got shot down, yes.