Breaking Free of Mediocre Trading
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The reality is, both senior traders and new and developing traders (developing = struggling) at successful proprietary trading firms tend to putz around day to day and make little to no progress, often regressing, if anything. The only true difference between the two is when the pocket aces (A++ trades) come around, the senior traders really go for it, whereas the developing trader tends to bet the same small amount, bet just a tad bit bigger, or skip the trade they know they should be a part of because it feels overly risky.
I'll use a guy by the name of Max as an example of this. Day to day, he often was +/- 1-10k (all of these trades wash out at best), which is often where many struggling traders live. But when a true A++ opportunity comes around that almost everyone can identify by learning alongside senior traders—such as $MSTR's overextension trade on 11/21/24—he'll express the idea with much larger size and in a number of unique ways (Texas hedge = common, leveraged products, options, intraday, swing portion, and overall just much bigger), and put up a >700k, if not much more, type of day. On the low end, his spread from just some BS trade where he loses 3k to an A++ trade is often 230x bigger, whereas the developing trader might have a spread of 2x bigger than his/her typical trade... If they typically make 3k on a trade, they might make 6k on this homerun opp, not good! (all it takes is 2 trades for the developing trader to give it all back whereas it'll take 230 trades for the senior trader to give it all back, almost impossible and it's likely 2-10 more A++ trades will come around before that ever happens getting him even further ahead)
Because the senior trader understands this so well, he actually begins to lose less in between the special opportunities, as they just aren't worth the time, whereas the developing trader feels the need to press, which often causes a spiral.
These big outlier A++ opportunities tend to be very forgiving and have win rates around 80-90%, and when they clearly aren't working, you understand the permutations so well that you can actually move out of the way without much damage. Sure, maybe you lose 3-5x the typical trade amount, but it doesn't matter when you win on 8/10 of them and make >230x the typical trade.
This is the stuff a lot of people online don't share because they actually are unaware that this is what it takes to have true returns in markets! It's the hard truth, it's the uncomfortable truth, but it is the truth!
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