Bert, judging by the page views in two weeks, either you have alot of company or this board has lots of humanatarians. I'm betting on the former. probably regret opening this can of worms... Oh well, life goes on.
I think we all root for the underdog,and i am willing to bet 90% of the humanitarians giving advice are NOT making a living at trading.. I will speak for myself...I am the ex head trader of equity dreivatives as well as emerging market derivatives at a MAJOR investment bank. Fortunately,I was seriously overpaid for quite a few years and can now take a shot at being an independent hedge fund operator... For my first year i was up 12%,albeit I trade on a relative value basis.i.e long portfoilo offset 100% by various indicies.I had a Sharpe of 1.5,which is Ok,but the point I am trying to make is I returned 12%....Nothing earth shattering. If you are trading anything less than 500k,good luck eating,let alone feeding a family with 12% returns....One could make the argument that I shouldnt have had a short hedge on(the hedge lost 12%),but I enjoy sleeping at night. To all those flipping the bird at their employer and planning on trading for a living,I would certainly caution you to think twice about it.Having an income stream to possibly subsidise your early trading will make your life a hell of a lot less stressful.. just my 2 cents
"Prop trading looks great, then why don't most retail traders simply join in?" http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=73668
Here's a better on. Focus on the center. <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3784/ultimateopticalillusionbf8.gif" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a> Always question your sensory inputs because they're usually wrong. By the time you become a seasoned trader, your emotion control will pretty much be on par with that of a psychopath. Meaning that you could win a million dollars or witness a gruesome murder, and the emotions in both situations will be the same. A sublime objective emotionless state of being, a true psychopath.
There can often be a small difference between success and failure in this business. Everything works and doesn't work. For every technical indicator out there it is probable that there is a successful trader somewhere utilising that technical indicator in a winning trade method even though many losing traders would also swear that this indicator doesn't work. Sometimes all you need to do is look at things from a different angle. It may be the wrong combination of indicators/techniques or using the same indicator in a different way that makes the world of difference. This may even require taking a few months off and then coming back to it so you can see the wood from the trees so to speak. âIf the oft-quoted industry loss statistics (that 90 to 95% of individual traders end up as losers) are even remotely accurate, then to succeed, you canât just do what everyone else does. Otherwise, the most likely scenario is that youâll end up just like them. Youâve got to think, analyze, and act differently.â Louis Mendelsohn
Monroe Trout said it best: "Make sure you have the edge. Know what your edge is. Have rigid risk control rules like the ones we talked about earlier. Basically, when you get down to it, to make money, you need to have an edge and employ good money management. Good money management alone isn't going to increase your edge at all. If your system isn't any good, you're still going to lose money, no matter how effective your money management rules are. But if you have an approach that makes money, then money management can make the difference between success and failure."
Unfortunately I agree. Lucky I have great job now, but very fortunate. Takes a long time to find one where you can work with nice people doing something interesting. And then things can still change.
Usually, the jobs I've had since out of college have royally sucked. The rare times otherwise have, as you note, ended up crappy. What else is there to do though than to keep plugging away? It's one of the prime motivations I have for doing my own thing. Someday....
I received a PM from someone in regards to this post, so I decided to post the question and my reply here to assist the other users here on ET that still dig up old threads...