I was in a similar situation at your age (now 40). My advise is to find a good way to trade for income with the bulk of your money. Find a strategy that is longer term. Personally I found VERY conservative covered put/call writing strategies to give me a decent 10-15% annual return with VERY minimal risk if done right. Take $50k and try your hand at Daytrading and expect to lose it as a cost of education (As long as you don't blow yourself out to fast it should last a few years). Also it is very important that you streamline your expenses to a fixed dollar amount to take the stress off yourself to perform. Remember this is a journey. It has been 2 years for me now as a Futures daytrader starting with 50k and I have been up and down 3 times so far. What a ride
nope, but I'm familiar with the term "trolls" on this board and the ignore function. This thing has gone too far for my taste.... my apology to the starter of this thread samson77 wrote : Personally I found VERY conservative covered put/call writing strategies to give me a decent 10-15% annual return with VERY minimal risk if done right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another dreamer?
And indeed you should appologise for writing such crap. But you won't be reading this will you, since you are 'ignoring' me. Which is a shame because you might learn something. In particular that writing covered calls / puts is a flawed stratedgy that simply takes away, not gives you edge, which personally I see as a rather bad idea. Samson 77 - you quote returns on this stratedgy of 10 -15 % if you had done it right - could you expand on that please, and also if it gives these returns, why, when I read your posts do I get the impression you are having a slightly tough time with the market? It is easy to delude oneself that a stratedgy WOULD have worked if one had only done this or that in hindsight. At the moment of the trade you executed in line with that stratedgy, I assume, and the results were as they were. I know that I lay into some folk, for example mark 1, as they express views that in my opinion are actually dangerously incompetant, and the above I have written for you may sound a bit like that, but actually I am not trying to give you a hard time. I can see from your posts that you have been trying really hard to suceed so it would be very unfair just to take the piss. However I think you should be realistic about what you are doing. For example covered calls / puts - when you put these on, first of all you are trading against the pro's, who are making a spread on that market which gives them thier edge. Secondly, unless you dynamically hedge, which you don't have the edge to do, your P/L is skewed against you. Finally, as a trading stratedgy, it fails because the risks against the movement in the opposite direction are unhedged. So while it LOOKS like a lower risk easy money trade, actually all you are doing is helping the pro's make a living. Once again, good luck.
Have you had any experince trading options or you only "think" that it is a bad strategy because of the limited gains/huge loss nature of the strategy? I ask because I am currently looking at options to add to my trading plan. Any advice is appreciated. What instruments do you trade now?
Yes I have traded options - I have also been involved in an options trading prop co, so I have a good idea. I do not trade them now. To fill you in. A covered call is the same being short a put. The risk, far from being negated by this covered business, is just as real. Personally I am hardly ever short gamma as I am big girls blouse. As well as not having any risk benefits, don't forget you will be on the outside of the spread in both markets, there are two sets of com to pay not one, but to make the point forecbly, thses are still irrelevant compared to the missreading of risk. In my opinion (and remeber that's all we are talking ) you need to be very well capitalised to trade options sucessfully. You need to have the currently high spec fastest equipment, extremely fast comms, the fastest software and a well formed stratedgy. The guys I know still trading options bank on a monthly cost of around 7500 sterling to achieve this. In order just to get on the same playing field........ However if you feel you have a specific edge, then maybe you don't need that ???:
Prince.... Yes I have been struggling with TRADING the Futures markets but it would be good to keep in mind that I have been in this business since 1984, 20 years. I was a Stockbroker for 7 years and retired from that side of the business at the age of 27 and I think I have a little bit of expertise with helping people manage money. My advise to this fellow is simple. Find a stock that you want to hold long term ... do whatever due diligence you do. Fundamentals, Technicals, throwing a dart, it doesn't matter so long as it makes sense to you and it is a sound long term play. I'm personally a big fan of CANSLIM and Bill Oneils techniques. Once you have your selection simple write naked puts as a means of entry with the intention the stock will be put to you and you want to hold it for years anyway. Just as an example; I did this 2 years ago on Barrick for 6 months before getting put the stock and made close to 20% returns I was then put the stock which I wanted to hold for 3 years anyway. I was bullish on gold. If you so desire and the math/profit is right at the time of entry then you can also write covered calls on it after you own it. I am by far a Market Wizard but I am a very decent investor.
========================= Ongoing; Might be an excerllant idea, a note to Marty Schwartz; might also want to experience the stress of winning & losing in daytrading first before you write the note . Might have misread your committment to trading ; since you are more committed than i thought to trading-WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH ''MOST OF YOUR CAPITAL IN HEDGE FUNDS''????????????????????????????????????????????????? Prince Phillip enjoyed your personal fast market read & commute to Chicago from England; but I respectfully disagree with your comment on luck. John Henry told the Boston Globe; What you call luck., I call a small sample.