Trading vs poker

This is pretty simmilar to poker isn't it? You have the bankroll management. You have a strategy. But you are playing a different "game".

Am I right?

Originally posted by petersveter
This is pretty simmilar to poker isn't it? You have the bankroll management. You have a strategy. But you are playing a different "game".

Am I right?

Yes you need to practice the same things in trading that you have to in poker, and the same faults will bring you down. But it's like that in most things in life.

I think trading is more like sports betting than poker. I have done both for a lot of years and Poker and Sports betting is much easier

Originally posted by petersveter
This is pretty simmilar to poker isn't it? You have the bankroll management. You have a strategy. But you are playing a different "game".

Am I right?

Sure, but there aren't micro stakes at trading. It's like you sit at a 6max poker table and you find out that the 5 other players are, Ivey, Blom, Dwan, Nanonoko & Galfond. Good luck. ♦

Originally posted by Phoenix2104

Sure, but there aren't micro stakes at trading. It's like you sit at a 6max poker table and you find out that the 5 other players are, Ivey, Blom, Dwan, Nanonoko & Galfond. Good luck. ♦

Perfect explanation. You forgot to say they're 300bb deep and you're 50bb deep. And you only just completed your first free 1/2 hour basic NL Holdem course.

Actually shallower stacks are better for less skilled players. Just sayin'...

Originally posted by EmanuelC16
Actually shallower stacks are better for less skilled players. Just sayin'...

Of course we don't only consider stack size when we're deciding our play or strategy, and of course all stack sizes are either: auto reloaded, reloaded or get up from the seat; but at the end of the day, you're sitting in a game with pro and better bankrolled players who are hoping you play as many hands as Dwan with little or no experience

Are you sure trading is a zero sum game? What about economic growth? Doesn't that impact it, at least when you trade in stocks?

As far as forex trading goes, and what I've read about it, it might be a zero sum game, but there are players in it that have to be "fish" by defoult. I'm talking about companys, banks and countries that are forced to make fx trades for their regular buissines, so they don't have much of a choice when exchanging currencys on a daily basis, and that's where the small traders come in(and also the big sharks, like specialised banks, hedg funds and such).

Disclamer:
My knowlage about trading is very poor, so this could be completly off:D

It seems to me that the "experts" replying about forex trading in this thread know very little about how the exchange markets work to me...even with my limited reading on tradimo, I can see that you are not competing against the best...you are competing against companies that need to convert money into another currency to exchange goods. Did anyone on this thread bother to actually read the articles?

Originally posted by roopopper
It seems to me that the "experts" replying about forex trading in this thread know very little about how the exchange markets work to me...even with my limited reading on tradimo, I can see that you are not competing against the best...you are competing against companies that need to convert money into another currency to exchange goods. Did anyone on this thread bother to actually read the articles? :([/quote

I don't think anyone was implying they were experts; but were offering their opinions;in my opinion. This is from their website. Like I said not an expert but in my humble opinion looks like they're offering to get you trading in the markets

to anticipate market turns with a high degree of accuracy, and plan your trades to make the most of market moves while minimizing risk? Then invest a few life-changing hours in our Power Trading Workshop, where you'll learn:

How to identify points where supply and demand are out of balance and price is about to move.
The two common mistakes of the novice trader that may be costing you money—and how to avoid them.
How to apply a simple rules-based trading strategy to any asset class including stocks, options, currencies and futures.

Originally posted by gp00053

Originally posted by roopopper
It seems to me that the "experts" replying about forex trading in this thread know very little about how the exchange markets work to me...even with my limited reading on tradimo, I can see that you are not competing against the best...you are competing against companies that need to convert money into another currency to exchange goods. Did anyone on this thread bother to actually read the articles? :([/quote

I don't think anyone was implying they were experts; but were offering their opinions;in my opinion. This is from their website. Like I said not an expert but in my humble opinion looks like they're offering to get you trading in the markets

to anticipate market turns with a high degree of accuracy, and plan your trades to make the most of market moves while minimizing risk? Then invest a few life-changing hours in our Power Trading Workshop, where you'll learn:

How to identify points where supply and demand are out of balance and price is about to move.
The two common mistakes of the novice trader that may be costing you money—and how to avoid them.
How to apply a simple rules-based trading strategy to any asset class including stocks, options, currencies and futures.

lol i agree with you... not sure why you quoted me....as this is not the kind of post I was talking about!!! I was talking about the retarded posts about trading against "experts" like phil Ivey when trading

Originally posted by roopopper
It seems to me that the "experts" replying about forex trading in this thread know very little about how the exchange markets work to me...even with my limited reading on tradimo, I can see that you are not competing against the best...you are competing against companies that need to convert money into another currency to exchange goods. Did anyone on this thread bother to actually read the articles?
I never claimed to be an expert, I have been through a couple of seminars about stocks and derivatives though, which is certainly more knowledge than a few articles on a website can provide. The main problem with derivatives is that you don't only speculate on the direction of the market but also on the exact timing of its moves, which is something, anyone with a remote knowledge of financial markets can tell you, that if it's not gambling, it's the closest thing to it.
Also, this is not even just my opinion. My stock broker who has worked for most of his life for Merrill Lynch and was conducting those seminars, told us that derivatives is a very, very dangerous game. And I think he does qualify as an expert.
You make it sound like those "companies that need to convert money into another currency to exchange goods" don't mind losing money, so, what the hell, I may as well stand in line to get some myself.
The fact is that in order for you to win some money, someone else must lose it. And who do you think you will be mostly trading with? Some clueless guy who has read some articles and is now ready to conquer the world? No, you'll be trading, as yourself said, with companies, who have hired experienced professionals to do the job. And, yes, they are the Iveys of this game. What makes you think you are better qualified that an experienced professional? Do you really think that having read a few articles on a website has provided you with more knowledge than years of studying and work has provided them?
You may decide to give it a try if you want, but you'd better know very well what you're doing. You can't really be so naive to think that reading a couple of articles will turn you into a shark ready to hunt the "little fishes" who work for the banks and the hedge funds. Or can you?
YOU will be the fish in this game, and unfortunately there will be sharks around, because, as I said, there is no segregation of pools here, you'll be trading with everybody.

Originally posted by roopopper
I was talking about the retarded posts about trading against "experts" like phil Ivey when trading

As Socrates said "Know Thyself".
I think that posts that give the impression that the FOREX markets are "easy money" waiting for any self-proclaimed genious to just join in and harvest the goods, are much more qualified to be labelled as "retarded". But then again, you could have been looking at a mirror when you made that comment.

Originally posted by roopopper
lol i agree with you... not sure why you quoted me....as this is not the kind of post I was talking about!!! I was talking about the retarded posts about trading against "experts" like phil Ivey when trading

OP asked about trading compared to poker. it was in that reference that Ivey's and other names were used to compare them with the people who are the big players in the markets. Not only traders but the people who get the offering ready for market.

I only quoted you because I thought you said that we didn't read the articles. I was just showing you that in addition to working and investing, I did read them. (well some of them anyway)

Originally posted by DimnjacarGogi
Hi,
it seems that trading and poker are similar in some ways (from my little google research). BRM, strategies, rakeback, rake exist in trading but in somewhat different name.

I really don't know anything about this so to be short, my questions are:

1. Where is bigger value?
2. Some solid poker player can make solid living, like 50k per year, how is that in trading?
3. Pros and cons of poker and trading?

Thanks,
would appreciate answer from someone who has experience in both.

If you have a big bankroll you can win much more in trading than in poker.

I think scalping and poker are similar, but I'm a swing trader (I trade 4hr and daily charts) and it's very different from playing poker. It doesn't take me more than 30 minutes to check the daily charts at NY close. In poker you must play hours and hours (same with scalping, you must trade hours and hours). However even scalpers have weekends (forex market is closed during weeked), poker players don't have weekends. So a big con of poker is the time you spend at the tables.

A big pro of trading is you can learn to trade on DEMO accounts. If you spend 1-2 years on demo accounts and win this means you will also win on real accounts. Try to play poker on play money tables. There's a big difference even between play money and 2NL. In trading there's no difference between limits. If you win with a $200 bankroll, you'll also win with a $20 000 bankroll or with a $ 200 000 bankroll. In poker it's possible you crush 100NL, then you move to 200NL and you're a marginal winner, then you move to 400NL and lose all your money. ♦

I only trade pin bars, engulfing bars and 2 bar reversals on 4hr and daily charts.
They must be at relevant support/resistance levels and at swing highs/lows. I don't use any indicators. My win rate is ~75% of time. I win on average the same amount that I lose (1:1 risk:reward). If I wanted to win more (2:1 reward:risk or more) my win rate would decrease and I will have to risk less money/trade. Most traders risk something like 2% or 3%/ trade, but because the setups that I trade are high probability setups I risk 10-15%/ trade. Given the fact that the probability to win the setups that I trade is 70%- 80% (and the average reward:risk ratio is 1:1), I can risk more and still have risk of ruin close to 0. To only trade setups with 75% probability to win (A++ setups) is like you are playing QQ, KK or AA in poker without being dealt the other marginal or trash hands. Sometimes I also trade pin bars or EG bars of less quality (small pin bars for instance). Then I will risk less money because the chances are smaller that I will win.

I've also tried other strategies in trading including indicators but they were not very profitable so now I only trade price action reversals and only on high time frames.

Originally posted by Dippy19
Are you sure trading is a zero sum game? What about economic growth? Doesn't that impact it, at least when you trade in stocks?

As far as forex trading goes, and what I've read about it, it might be a zero sum game, but there are players in it that have to be "fish" by defoult. I'm talking about companys, banks and countries that are forced to make fx trades for their regular buissines, so they don't have much of a choice when exchanging currencys on a daily basis, and that's where the small traders come in(and also the big sharks, like specialised banks, hedg funds and such).

Disclamer:
My knowlage about trading is very poor, so this could be completly off:D

Hey Dippy,

Very late response I know, but the way it is zero sum in this regard is someone had to sell you the stock, so they made a "loss" by selling too early. They sold something for $5 that was actually worth $10

I guess by economic growth, you're talking about increasing market capitalization, again, same principle, the person who sold you the stock has lost out due to the change in stock price

Originally posted by bennisboy

Originally posted by Dippy19
Are you sure trading is a zero sum game? What about economic growth? Doesn't that impact it, at least when you trade in stocks?

As far as forex trading goes, and what I've read about it, it might be a zero sum game, but there are players in it that have to be "fish" by defoult. I'm talking about companys, banks and countries that are forced to make fx trades for their regular buissines, so they don't have much of a choice when exchanging currencys on a daily basis, and that's where the small traders come in(and also the big sharks, like specialised banks, hedg funds and such).

Disclamer:
My knowlage about trading is very poor, so this could be completly off:D

Hey Dippy,

Very late response I know, but the way it is zero sum in this regard is someone had to sell you the stock, so they made a "loss" by selling too early. They sold something for $5 that was actually worth $10

I guess by economic growth, you're talking about increasing market capitalization, again, same principle, the person who sold you the stock has lost out due to the change in stock price

Not really. A zero sum game means that for you to gain, he'd have to lose. If he bought it for $3 and sold it for $5 to you, and you in turn sold it for $10 you have all gained. Dippy19 is actually right, you guys seem to be forgetting that the stock represents a real company in the real world, and if the economy grows and most companies experience growth almost everybody "wins," you don't even have to know the game to profit from that in such circumstances.

Poker in turn is indeed a zero-sum game (unless you want to account for rake), because each dollar you win is a dollar someone else lost. Unlike in the real market, there's no growth inherent to the game itself.

Obviously, it gets much more complicated when put into practice, but the principles remain the same.

Originally posted by BluffMe1980

Originally posted by bennisboy

Originally posted by Dippy19
Are you sure trading is a zero sum game? What about economic growth? Doesn't that impact it, at least when you trade in stocks?

As far as forex trading goes, and what I've read about it, it might be a zero sum game, but there are players in it that have to be "fish" by defoult. I'm talking about companys, banks and countries that are forced to make fx trades for their regular buissines, so they don't have much of a choice when exchanging currencys on a daily basis, and that's where the small traders come in(and also the big sharks, like specialised banks, hedg funds and such).

Disclamer:
My knowlage about trading is very poor, so this could be completly off:D

Hey Dippy,

Very late response I know, but the way it is zero sum in this regard is someone had to sell you the stock, so they made a "loss" by selling too early. They sold something for $5 that was actually worth $10

I guess by economic growth, you're talking about increasing market capitalization, again, same principle, the person who sold you the stock has lost out due to the change in stock price

Not really. A zero sum game means that for you to gain, he'd have to lose. If he bought it for $3 and sold it for $5 to you, and you in turn sold it for $10 you have all gained. Dippy19 is actually right, you guys seem to be forgetting that the stock represents a real company in the real world, and if the economy grows and most companies experience growth almost everybody "wins," you don't even have to know the game to profit from that in such circumstances.

Poker in turn is indeed a zero-sum game (unless you want to account for rake), because each dollar you win is a dollar someone else lost. Unlike in the real market, there's no growth inherent to the game itself.

Obviously, it gets much more complicated when put into practice, but the principles remain the same.

I have to say I disagree.

Especially with the prevalence of short-sellers in the market. Plus the opportunity cost of selling too soon. It's future wealth lost from my point of view. Looking around, there is quite a lot of different persepctives on whether it is zero sum or not.

Here is quite a good piece on why trading is zero sum, but investment is not

I write a series for Slate called "Bad Advice," in which I take common but poor investment advice and explain why it’s bad. One of my consistent themes is that, in most cases, the more you trade, the worse you do. The logic behind this is that, unlike investing, trading is a zero-sum game: every dollar "won" by one trader must be "lost" by another. (When you throw in transaction costs, moreover, trading becomes a negative-sum game: most traders lose.)

One Slate reader argued that this logic was bogus, that trading is NOT a zero-sum game, because if you buy a stock at $5 and it goes to $10, the $5 you make does not come out of someone else’s pocket. The reader is missing an important distinction, but the response is common, so here’s a longer explanation.

First, you have to draw a clear distinction between "investing" and "trading." Every market participant defines these terms differently, but, for now, let us say that "investing" means holding a portfolio of stocks for an entire period (any period–a day, month, year, decade, or century). "Trading," meanwhile, means switching stocks during the period with the aim of exceeding the mere "investment" return. (There is no other reason to trade.)

Investing in a diversified portfolio of stocks is usually a positive-sum game: stocks usually go up, and when they do, "investors" make money. The only way to exceed the "investment return," meanwhile, is to buy good stocks and sell bad ones. If a trader does this well, he or she will exceed the market (or "investment") return. Stocks have to be owned by someone, though–even bad stocks–and the trader who bought the bad stocks from the better trader will lag the investment return. In a case in which there are only two traders, the winning trader will exceed the market return by exactly the amount that the losing trader lags it (before costs).

In an essay called "The Arithmetic of Active Management," professor William Sharpe explains the phenomenon this way: The gross return of all traders in a market must equal the market return. If the market goes up 10%, in other words, the gross return of all traders must also be 10% (assuming they all remain fully invested and don’t keep some percentage of their portfolio in cash, which is another "market").

To apply this to the reader’s example above, let’s assume that the "investment return" of the stock in question is $5 (the move from $5 to $10). Assuming the reader held the stock for the entire period, he or she would have made $5. If instead of holding the stock for the entire period, however, the reader tried to exceed the "investment return" by trading the stock back and forth with another trader, the gross return of both traders would still equal $5. Depending on the relative skill (or luck) of the traders, however, the return of each particular trader might be very different: One trader might make $3 while the other made $2. Or one might make $5 while the other made $0. Or one might make $10 while the other lost $5.

What the Slate reader is missing, in other words, is the distinction between "investing" and "trading." In the U.S. stock market over the past century or so, the "investing return" has been about 10% a year. The aggregate "trading" return, meanwhile, has been 10% less the costs of trading. Because it is impossible for the aggregate "trading" return to exceed the "investing" return, every dollar that has been won by one U.S. stock trader has been lost by another.

Read more: Why Trading is a Zero-Sum Game - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2007/03/08/why_trading_is_/#ixzz2K93eZ5lN

Oh, okay, from that point of view I'd say it'd be hard not to agree. But I guess it's as much about mindset as it is about the nature of the business itself. In poker, the zero-sum nature of the game is simply set in stone... or am I still missing something here?

Originally posted by BluffMe1980
Oh, okay, from that point of view I'd say it'd be hard not to agree. But I guess it's as much about mindset as it is about the nature of the business itself. In poker, the zero-sum nature of the game is simply set in stone... or am I still missing something here?

Nah I think that's right.
Stock market game depends much more on technicalities and quirks, where as poker ther can be no debate over it's nature

Originally posted by fuzzyfish
Have to agree with LaBonneJider.

In trading you are competing against field of people with university education and years of experience. It's possible to make money with trading but only the brightest / hardest working ones can make it.

Read once again your post.
Read once more, dont get nervous.

Now that you are calm, please tell me witch part of your post dont match poker

Is there any part , apart from word 'university' which does not match poker there?

By the way the literature that exist now on poker IMHO, IS university

Originally posted by CRI4BRA

Originally posted by fuzzyfish
Have to agree with LaBonneJider.

In trading you are competing against field of people with university education and years of experience. It's possible to make money with trading but only the brightest / hardest working ones can make it.

Read once again your post.
Read once more, dont get nervous.

Now that you are calm, please tell me witch part of your post dont match poker

Is there any part , apart from word 'university' which does not match poker there?

By the way the literature that exist now on poker IMHO, IS university

So wrong on so many levels...

In poker there are different limits with different skill level of the average players, while in trading there is no such thing. In the beginning in poker you start (you should) from the lowest possible limit, where most of your competition is people with the same skill level. But in trading right from the beginning you are playing the game against the biggest banks in the world, the million dollar automatic trading algorithms, the people with inside information and so on...

Imagine you start playing poker on NL2 but your 5 opponents are Galfond, Isildurr, Sauce etc... Do you think you will move up the limits? Like ever?