Trading Zoomers - What to Expect

Expect your income to come from 3-5 lump sums per year, interspersed with many small losses.

The market is not linear. Typically, it presents 3-5 great buying opportunities per year, when multiple zoomers break out. They also tend to top out around the same time, forcing you to take profits.

Many novices expect trading to generate regular monthly income. This is particularly dangerous if you need trading to pay your monthly bills. If you are under pressure to produce a certain amount by a deadline, you are likely to take above average risks. If those result in losses, you will take even more risk in a race to recover the losses and still make the quota by the deadline. This can degenerate into a death spiral.

Expect to give some of the profits back.

You don't have a profit until you sell. But even after you do, don't count all the money as yours. Some of it has to go back to the market when you get back in, as you are likely to sustain more losses.

Expect your returns to be commensurate with your effort and skills.

Novices often want to know how much they can make. They view trading as easy money affording them a glamorous lifestyle in the fast lane. Nothing is further from the truth. In trading, you are up against the sharpest minds on Wall Street whose job is to take your money. The amount of money you can take out of the market depends on the amount of effort and skill. There are no short cuts.

Expect the unexpected.

No amount of due diligence will protect you against sudden losses, painful reversals, and humiliating setbacks. No system is foolproof. Expect things to go wrong and be prepared to deal with it. Trading is not an exact science. Expect to operate on incomplete information, contradictory signals, and opposing views.

Expect to be alone.

Trading is a lonely endeavor. It's you against the world.

Expect to develop an edge.

The really big money comes from an edge. Any stock you touch is likely to be traded by a handful of professionals who know more than you do, have more capital than you do, and have been doing it longer than you. Do not expect to beat them at their own game. Any commercial system is used by countless others. Do not expect to make more than the crowd by running with the crowd. You need an edge to win, and it takes time to develop one.