Your stating that you couldnt make enough money as a MM. That is interesting...and you say you have been in the business for 15 years and still couldnt make a living on it. GET OUT. Not worth staying in the business if you cant make money to live off of. MM's dont really take direction, i know they can, but they usally just take the order flow....not making money as a MM is a bad sign. Unless ur trading in really thin stock where there is no paper flow (as a specialist) or on the floor at the CBOE where the MMs are getting picked off by the guys upstairs and losing order flow to ISE and soon to be BOX. MM is not easy, because you can be stuck with huge orders you have to take down on the wrong side, however MMs should be making enough to live off i would assume.
Not strange at all. The traders I know who make a good living average 50K accts, and make several times that. Some more, some less. Most sweep their accounts every month, and invest in other stuff. Only occaisionally do I hear of someone that keeps growing their account to epic proportions. Too easy to blow an account that way. I also keep my acct pretty small. I have to for psychological reasons. I have blown large accts twice. Seems like no risk when ya sweep the account. Note: almost all the good traders I know were professionally trained. A bit harder doing it just from reading books and practice, although it can be done. They also all use big leverage to get the returns they do. Disciplined as hell with it though. Jay
Most are equity traders originally (now trade futures too) from NYC. They had various positions on the floor. When I met them, at Bright, they already had years in the industry. All day traders. I have a few futures only buddies who do well, both trained and not. One was trained at Gelderman I think, and the other at a trading firm on the CME. Jay
to ERTRADER1's response. I stated I was in the business 15 years not a mm for all those years. I made 7 figures as a mm I think that i was a LITTLE succesful? I"ve been in that business long enought to know mm and daytrading are very diffrent.
jztrading: Like anything else, they say don't try to live off it for 5 years. Depends on your overhead. Someone who has a $1,000 overhead may be able to pull it off... again, depends on your acct size too - someone with a billion dollar acct may be able to pull it off. ol