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Not surprising at all to me that others will have substantially higher returns, the market is rewarding risk taking in a huge way. I'm quite risk averse , the pride of my method for me is the beta against market. I perform strongest in sideways markets, followed by down, and last in strong up markets. I very rarely have a negative month while still returning what I think are very healthy returns. People buying momentum could easily see 70%+ annual returns, until they don't.
The right method is different for everyone, a balancing act of knowledge, temperament, and time make the answer different for each person. Some traders will go with momentum which right now is gangbusters and recognize when the tide is moving and change strategies, the less experienced will keep at what was working not seeing the change in the market till it's too late and the habits that had been making them money begin costing them money.
This is why one of the things I recommend for anyone finding their way and developing their method/strategy is make sure you keep track of each type of trade you make and put them into baskets and keep notes so that you can later properly analyze what is working and what isn't and the conditions in which they worked and didn't.
I just went back and counted I have 37 down months in the last 240 months (15% of the time) and most of those where when I was still quite new. In the last 60 months I have had 4 down months (6.7% of the time).
This plays into why I don't believe anyone can really solidify a trading plan in a short time frame as you need to trade in different types of markets which can be many years apart. Part of why secular bear markets can be devastating is that they are rare enough that an entire generation of money managers, at the time one starts, will have never seen one before. The longer term secular trends 30-40 yr trends are a result of humans going through the same learning process generation after generation. Getting a little lost in the weeds but I expect the Millennials generation to have their secular bear market sometime in the 2030s and have all these bull market axioms turned on their head and we lose another decade or more like (1930s) , (1968-1982), (2000-2013)
when the market turns you better be very active posting your PICK OF THE DAY
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