Hadn't thought about this, but definitely a good thought. I may be the opposite and futures might suit me more than stocks. But only time will tell. Preciate it.
Thanks. It's true, if you can't make money doing it, it just makes you frustrated, questions your passion for it. In all honesty, though, I'm very early in the trading cycle, I just started trading this year for real (with real $$$), and have been taking some really low dollar risk bets. I think it's not just the making money aspect, but the enjoyment from the process and the analysis that I'm questioning too. I don't know if I'm as passionate about it. I'm not like obsessed with it as I think others are. I'm not rushing to check the markets. But having said this, as user schizo said earlier in this thread, if I was making bank from it, I'd probably be saying how much it matches with my inner calling lol. And schizo is right. There was however, that initial spark that drew my attention to it. And I still experience that from time to time.
Absolutely agree. This is what I do when I suffer losses. I take a break from trading, do something else, and then revisit my trading plan and my trading action to see if there is anything I can improve, where I did wrong and I can tell you it's my losses that have made my trading better. My losses are almost my best friend. LOL Nobody is destined to do anything. Nobody is born with a sticker on its head with career choices so I don't think there is such a thing as "what you are meant to do". The universe really doesn't care what you do imo. LOL Everybody just stuck with their career choices because they 1) like what they do and 2) are able to make a lot of money doing it after they start doing it but you won't know if you are able to make a lot of money doing it until you've given it all you got and tried your hardest. Everybody starts out broke. When Seinfeld started doing stand-up comedy, he was broke, sharing an apartment with 2 other actors but he just kept going at it until he succeeded.
Investor, not a day trader here. You may want to go back to your old university...Career/placement center. Not to look for a job, but to take the same test you probably took your freshmen year in college. The test that shows you where your interest lay...Personality traits. You may be called to teaching, coding, analysis, without trading!! My son in law went to UCLA...Computer science. He dropped out at age 20...Had to code 8+ hours a day. Twenty years later, he has come full circle...He codes for a private company 40+ hours a week.
If IB / Sierrachart were more compatible and IB wasn't so annoyingly buggy and over engineered, I think futures would suit me too, unfortunately Australia is 50 years behind US in terms of what's available in brokers and trading platforms so I'm forced to compromises into stocks as that's what Australia seems to prefer. It's not all bad as metals and mining here offer plenty of opportunities.
I guess Trading is like a prospector panning for Gold, trying to strike it rich. It's that hope of trying to solve a puzzle to solve the Market. That's the addiction for me
The more you get into it, the more you will become passionate about it. You are still early in your trading career. Eventually you will be getting up in the middle of the night or staying up all night to check the market like us. LOL For me, it's the challenge of it. I told you I feel my losses are my best friend. It's the losses that push me to do more and study more about trading and the market and figure things out. I like the high of conquering challenges and overcoming adversity. LOL
Dawn, do you think you have a bigger edge in infinite gamma or arbitration? LOL (you likes lol-caps) I imagine it's hard to choose as you're such an elite tradeer.
There's only one problem, you'll slave away having fun for years trying to decypher how everything ticks and clicks, then one day suddenly, with hardly any warning, you'll turn this corner in trading and before you then is nothingness, nothing to do, nothing to figure out, you'll have reached the peak and the downhill ski run from there will be effortless more or less. @Handle mentioned it the other day, just boring.
I enjoy looking at compounding calculators. I can turn a relatively small amount of capital into large amounts. Of course, compounding calculators aren't 100% accurate (they don't take into account losses). But it gives me motivation to keep on trading.