He used to, but no longer does following negative trading results. He does psy coaching as he is lucky of having a pryschology degree. We did discuss about the need to find the real reasons people trade, so as to discover if this leads to failure in trading Makes me think of the millionnaire next's door surprising results as regards to millionnaires. However, there are other vehicles to millionnaire status than listed into the US studies. Trading attraction reasons for the masses: * low barriers to entry * few information about success rate before starting * confusion with "wall street" activities * chance/luck beliefs : if this person has done it, I can too easily ( not finding out that such person has actually accumulated tremendous skills that creates the 'good luck') Now about trading poor odds : it is because most people are not well prepared beforehand, and assume it will be much easier than they realise, and of course do not bother about all the aspects ( including psychology ) so people at one point give up.
So you know many millionaires in real estate and Buffett was an idiot to you because of the astronomical poor odds. He should have had more chances in dry cleaning or real estate, because his changes for success were about zero statistically. I did in my life many things, so also real estate. I am happy that I did never had the same opinion as you before I started trading because I make now at least 100 times more money in trading than I did in real estate. The best way to become very rich is by doing something others don't do, because then you have less competition and huge potential for growth. Examples: Whatsapp owners made billions in a short time. Facebook owners made billions in a short time. Twitter owners made billions in a short time. Oracle owners made billions in a short time. Google, Apple..... But if you watch it like you do, so in statistics and astronomical poor odds, they all were wrong and should have gone in real estate or dry cleaning. It is not because you know many rich people that you know how it works best, it is when you are yourself very rich that you know how it works. If you know what was best you should have been billionaire. The fact that you are not proofs how weak your point is. I call this hindsight. And there are always excuses why you did not succeed in what you promote.
I guess its down to where you come from. Many people I used to work with were rocket scientists or particle physicists, toting phds in maths and physics. For them its a valid question, why not this rather than Higgs Boson? Academically my subject was economics, and my maths is just about up to that, and can't meet the demands of designing particle accelerator experiments. I went from a general financial job (trading exotic options in an IB) into a systematic trading HF, so that kind of explains my interest. I suppose in more abstract terms its a great field for a renissance man type person (or more prosacially a jack of all trades - someone who has too little attention span to focus overtly on one discipline) - there's a bit of programming, a bit of trading, a bit of financial theory, a bit of economics, a bit of psychology... and you'll do best as someone who has a reasonable grasp of all of these fields rather than as an expert in one.
I know rich RE people also and would say it is one of the easiest paths to wealth. Here is how: Get a job, save up down payment (5k can be enough). Buy house/apt/condo on loan. Save 2nd down payment, move into new place, rent out the old. Rinse, repeat, with each place one gets more and more so cash flow positive allowing faster purchase of properties.
Interesting... My goal: continued autonomy, with income becoming entirely passive come retirement age (which I define as when I won't have the energy or ability to perform active income-producing tasks). Trading can scale which is neat, as my former occupation could not, but for me safety trumps greed. Why trading chosen as a means to achieve my goal: I've been fascinated by it for the past 20 years, as a concept. More importantly, it combines enough of my strengths to be a "getting paid is a bonus" craft, which my former occupation did but irreversibly drifted too far away from. (Yeah I know, most people get by fine with a job they don't really like; I just happen not to want to settle just yet. Am I a spoiled brat who must get his own way, or just reasonably ambitious? It's all relative.) The big positive is that all structure is purely personal with no third-party interference (with deadlines, urgent bug reports, changing project charters half-way into development, etc.) That's very relaxing and freeing to me. Icing on the cake is that it's obviously a field of activity where time involvement can potentially be inversely proportional to capital size, which meets the retirement part of my goal. I couldn't think of any other activity which aligned my interests with my goals this well, and I've looked into a lot of wildly different ideas.
I work in a financial institution. For years, I priced and risk managed (quant) various esoteric derivatives for hedge funds. However, never made a boat load of money or anything. I think it was my own lack of ambition at that point which was to blame for that. But I am tired now. Cannot handle the 9 to 5 anymore. The stress of running your own PA seems less to me now than the stress of the daily grind. I don't require to make a ton of money from retail trading. Just enough to subsist while I finally get the time for some other activities I always wanted to take up. As to the point of other avenues of making money, sure, but I am already in this game professionally and thus the learning curve is not as steep as regular joe. Why not real estate? Never enjoyed the idea of being long term levered. But if another cycle starts, who knows.
to get rich(er). real estate doesn't appeal (lack of liquidity). dry cleaning biz sure as hell doesn't appeal (sounds like a job). btw, dry cleaners = millionaires, surely urban myth?
Buffett is a lucky idiot, but that's another story. Money does not discriminate---- the issue with trading is your competition are the smartest people on earth. In small business, that is far from the case in general terms. Sure, I should be a billionaire but I have always had issues with overspending-- it is my demon. I like things more than money--- yes, its a big issue. i understand and am working on it- and would rather own nice homes, etc than have excessive money in the bank..... that's my issue and I am dealing with it. surf
I think its a fact, but then again...http://www.briefingwire.com/pr/dry-...aires-than-any-other-franchisefact-or-fiction Agree, it would suck. but hey, it apparently makes the $$$