Had an undergrad in Quantitative Methods (Stats etc.), Masters in Operations Research (Optimization stuff) and a 2nd MS in Management Science. Those degrees got me into the corporate world where I developed math and AI (Expert System) systems to do production planning and scheduling in automotive plants. I saw that a big corporate environment wasn't for me longer term so after saving up some $$$ I headed out to trade. My goals early on were to make enough to cover living expenses and increase my $$$ with my trading firm. Going from memory I think after 12 years I had my account up to $500K from the $90K I started with and had met my living expenses out of that as well. I then reallocated a bunch away from the day (and short term) trading account so as to not get reckless and overtrade with too big of an account. Early on I used TA a lot but after a couple years found I was spending way too much time each evening analyzing charts. So I ditched that and recall trading the same stocks over and over for some time (INTC, DELL, MSFT, ASND, CSCO). I still do that a lot today ... stocks I trade a lot are FLEX, ONNN, SAMN, ATML, PMCS, JBL, AMAT, GOOG, AAPL, FEYE ... the more intra-day volatility the better I like them.
there were people in the 90's that turned less than 100k into many millions starting with at home retail accounts. I know some but don't feel like doxing them. if anyone is doing research on the subject or writing a book or something, pm me and I will provide names. One guy traded nothing but retail accounts into millions but blew out and is now a used car salesman.
Nope. I paper traded a year prior to my leaving my job. See prior post. Are you a successful at home day trader with no other source of income who began with modest means?
Yes, practically everyone knows someone who does it. Except me, I have never come across someone who could do it himself, at least not convincingly. If those people were making it in the 90's but not now then they might have gotten lucky in a one way market. Real skills should work in all markets and all times.
No, not at all. You don't have real $$$ so you don't experience the emotional ups and downs when paper trading. When I moved to All Tech after 2 years I paper traded a couple weeks to get the hang of their trading platform. I found the fills were mostly really good, which may have been in part to give newer traders a bit of self confidence.
Can be if you're emotionally distant from it. ...that is, once you overcome the "nah, come to think of it I wouldn't have taken that one for real" phase.
Does the counterparty behave the same in real and paper trade then ? They have money at stake as well.
Paper trade can work for learning a broker platform. But I don't see how paper trade can reflect real trade strategy in any way because in a real trade the entity taking the other side of your trade also has money at stake. That entity is not known to give free money to people. Common belief is that 90% of people lose their money to that entity.