KD or the Retail Trader? (Part 3)

I left off with mention of NS. Time to wrap up his story.

After I asked where he got my name, he responded:

     > Hi Mark,
     >
     > I found your contact information on the… [collaboration spreadsheet]
     > from KD.
     >
     > I have decided to continue to trade stocks only for now. I think this
     > adventure and undertaking is premature at this moment in my life, the
     > time commitment and capital needed to succeed is not there. Will
     > revisit this in the future. Thank you for your understanding.
     >
     > NS

In 24 hours, NS apparently went from enthusiastically seeking collaboration on futures trading strategies to not trading futures at all. He doesn’t have the time commitment: did he just learn what kind of commitment it would take? He doesn’t have the capital: did he just learn about capital requirements? Did he research these critical details before spending thousands of dollars on the course? He seems like a responsible adult: a family man and a CEO of a company with 20 employees. Sudden reversal and complete oversight are not what I would expect from a guy with his head on straight.

This escapade with NS strikes me as the epitome of fickle. You know, fickle: capricious, changeable, variable, volatile, vacillating, mercurial, irregular, inconstant, undependable, unsteady, etc.

This also reminds me of trader reluctance to discuss losers (see second paragraph here and bullet points 6 – 7 here).

Since NS and the 12 e-mail contacts I wrote about are all associated with KD, I wonder if this behavior is a reflection of a lousy approach. Paying for a failing system is an ego-challenging experience when we feel ripped off, taken advantage of, or violated. I wrote earlier about my failure. I gave 3+ months of full-time effort. I was disciplined. I documented. I exchanged 50 – 100 e-mails with KD asking questions, discussing details, and reviewing examples. My time committed is more than I would would expect from most. If it didn’t work for me, then I would not be surprised to learn it didn’t work for others either. KD warns it may require even greater effort, but it could be a complete farce. I have my suspicion.

On another hand, statistics about the high failure rates among traders as a whole circulate often. Maybe the same sort of commitment and patience required to succeed with KD is required to succeed with trading and most people just don’t have it. Trading itself could be a farce, but I have to admit that I have succeeded with my overall efforts until now. This makes me less likely to reject the entire trading enterprise.