Make sure trading is something that fascinates you If not, you're better off doing something else - there are a million ways to make money (that are even easier)
whatever you do please start small trading or investingwise if you start big ... there is a good chance you will be small ( acct wise ) these markets are at extremely nuts at present good luck
Let me give you a sense of reality. 1) Almost every one on this board either does not trade real money, or is a losing trader. 2) It takes years, not months to learn to trade successfully 3) --> a) The commonly held rule of thumb is is, that 95% of all traders will lose their money, period. --> b) The truth is, that of the remaining 5%, they are not "successful." Most of them break even or make small profits in exchange for huge amounts of time, energy and money invested. So let us say less than 1% total make any sort of living at it. And it is HARD to continue this for many years in a row. I see people here who declare themselves successful based on 5 weeks of trading. Clueless, truly clueless. --> c) out of this "remaining" 1%, most of the people probably had solid industry connections or experience. Your chance of longterm success (a decent living wage) is probably something over 2000 to 1. --> d) Successful traders, probably spend up to 10,000 hours glued to their monitors staring and trying to learn price activity, many hours a day for many days for years, to get there The smartest thing would be, to run away from trading now, before you start. Cruel, but true. People who tell you the opposite either do not know how to trade, or are not really helping you.
this is very true... however, you can give it a try if you have passion for it and enjoy it....then it's not going to be a big deal if you lose (I understand you're willing to invest money that you don't need for living) I remember after a couple years staring at charts, sleepless nights, with my account down 50%, I still didn't regret the time spend, because I've learn a lot, I enjoyed the research etc....then eventually it paid off...it took a while but it did
You can reach profitability in six months but you will require training from a mentor. Losing money will be your next best teacher so don't spend much time paper trading or being on a sim. Good luck!
I am not a huge reader of Psychology books, but I am a huge believer in back/forward testing of my ideas of trading before committing funds to these ideas. What I deemed before was a good size sample of 300 has now grown to a min. of 2000 occurances. I want to know how far against the trade the market went on my winning trades, this will tell me what my Protective stops should be. I want to know how many bars the market travels on average for a winning trade, how many on a losing trade. By knowing how many on a winning trade, I can form a rule that if the market has not gone to a Breakeven stop in so many bars, I can take a little loss or go to breakeven stop faster. I want to know more on how to manage the trade than how much I am going to profit. I don't want to make losing trades into winning trades. I want to discover what makes it a winning trade, and do it again. I call losing trade "Next". One must be committed to learning this craft unless of course you are doing this as a hobby, 100 plus hour weeks is my norm, I love what I do entering my 28th year. And yes, I had blown out a dozen accounts to $105k loss before turning it around. The smarter you are the longer it takes. And it takes men much longer to figure out, we want to be right and until one learns "right" will lose your account... "OH, no price is getting close to my stop, I will just extend it, everyday I would extend it, couldn't take the $200 loss cause I just knew it is going to reverse....$3,000 later...ring ring=margin call" and I did not learn that my first time, shame on me. I never ever recommend to anyone to day trade, it takes one away from much of life, if you are not willing to allow trading to take over your life, you will be one of the 95%s. Most people spend more time planning their vacations then planning how to make their money increase. If you don't test yours ideas to the extreme, you will never know how bad is bad and Much more importantly how good is good. Too many traders blow out their accounts right after doing well, cause ego comes into play and they add on contracts, lose it much quicker than making it. You have to learn to enjoy failure, you will learn all the worst parts about yourself, you will keep saying "I am so close" and another few years go by... If you are lazy, you will fail, my downfall in my youth. As your experience increases, you see things you didn't notice five years ago, but the bars have always been there. And if you use a vendor other than for new ideas, you are throwing money to the winds. Try to get any of them to show you a couple years worth of brokerage statements, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightening. Wish all a good weekend.
true words. Unfortunately starting out, most people convince themselves they are NOT in the 95%, and they should be achieving 1000% annual profits within a couple of months. And on EliteTrader, there are hundreds of paper traders egging them on.
I tend to obsess over new ventures, and eat, sleep and drink it. I figured one of my biggest challenges if I started trading would be my inability to pull myself away from it and give it a break. But maybe that is an advantage?