Hi Your a young guy, life has many twists and turns. What is around the corner well, who knows. Perhaps it will not all be bad. It's my honest opinion that to be a success at trading you need to have gone bust once. Granted it can take time to fight back. The skills you have acquired will never leave you. I speak from experience. Good luck to you spreadbet
You might be one of the exceptions. I too, am in the same boat BUT I read somewhere that only 5% of daytraders make a good living. Others fail or don't earn enough to live comfortably. With those odds, some people are dreaming. You can persevere as much as you want. The masses, in general, will not succeed regardless of their efforts. You gotta be REAL.
Slippery as usual, ial, and just as pompous. My success or failure is not the issue. The issue is whether or not you have the right to encourage someone you are not prepared to support to keep trying to trade even though he has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any capacity to succeed. If you believe that you are competent to encourage GG to continue and if you are prepared to assume the responsibility for the consequences, then (a) prove that you are a successful trader and (b) detail those characteristics that you and GG have in common. If you're not willing to do that, then put a cork in it and stop shoving somebody you hardly know into bankruptcy.
You miss the point, moron. GG has already failed. What is pitiful is that you encourage him to continue to hammer away at a task for which he is unsuited. Invite him into your home, ial. Support him. Be his mentor. Put up or shut up.
You can't trade futures or sell short at Interactive Brokers with less than $2,000 in your account. But you can trade options, they don't use margin, and the $2,000 minimum is not a trading minimum but a margin mimimum. You can probably also buy stocks, but maybe not. With a Cash account you could buy stocks with less than $2,000. You can't sell short from a Cash account, because that's margin trading. You would need $2,000 to open a new Cash account (you can't downgrade a margin account to cash), but you wouldn't need to keep the $2,000 minimum in it for long, just to open it. So you aren't absolutely forced to stop trading by IB. Having said that, I'd like to state for the record that I agree wholeheartedly with dbphoenix, and I suggest that everyone on here stop trading altogether. Come on, it will be fun. We can have a laugh while we watch the online brokers all go out of business without us, and watch the S.E.C. languish without all the fees we give them. We'll have the last laugh!
Gordon, Fly Southwest (cheap) one-way out to Vegas, get a cheap room to rent on a monthly basis in some dancers (exotic) condo. Then go out and get a valet job in the evenings at one of the bigger casino's ($35,000 to $70,000 a year...no shit!). Start building up some savings and paper trade during the mornings until you have a breakthrough! Now start your real trading again, and after a few months take $10,000 out to Bright Trading and go prop! P.S. - Stay away from all forms of gambling (discipline test #1). Stay away from all strip clubs (discipline test #2).