In this business, paying off a mortgage may not be a bad idea, when you can go for weeks without a paycheck. Leveraged accounts you can get 10 times your money or more, allthough if you hold positions overnight, firms are more careful
We advise our traders to pay cash for cars, houses, investments, and everything else...as your personal "buying power" increases, so many tend to get buried in a house they can't reallyafford, buy a fancy car (or even lease one, not ever a good idea)....and develop a horrible "monthly living expense" - which can affect your trading. Keep monthly expenses below $10K, and pay off as much as you can when you can. IMO. All the best, Don
Thanks goldenarm. I trade mainly Oil and Mining stocks and the Crude futures. My trade are about 1-3 day swing trades. I don't allocate more than 20% of my portfolio to one stock. I usually will buy a basket of stocks, say like 8-13 oil companies, hold for 2-3 days, looking to make 2-3% on my investment. I've been doing about 3-5 trades like that a month. I'm mostly sitting around waiting, but that's the hardest part. Tell you what, I've read TONS of books. But my trading REALLY turned around after reading Oneil's 'How to Make Money in Stocks'. I also agree with Don Bright. I try to pay cash for everything. I usually only use an AmEx. Heck, I still drive a 99 Jetta with 140k miles!!
Brian- Your best bet might be to trade retail out of a prop shop. For example, I think Schonfeld offers retail accounts where you could trade your own capital from a room with other traders to share ideas, and even get lower rates than the OPUS traders. Your leverage is limited to 4-1 intraday and 2-1 overnight, but you seem to have ample capital without much leverage, especially if you can keep compounding your account at 30% a year. I hope you didn't get hurt too bad these last two weeks when many of the strongest sectors earlier this year got hit hard. That is one of the risks in relative strength trading, although it has generated good long term results if you can withstand the drawdowns.
Thanks George. I have actually been speaking with Bright. I think I will be opening an account with them and stay remote for now. I liked the fact that Bright actually returned my calls. Can't say the same for Schon.. Yeah, oil and gold took a hit. I was waiting for a correction. Got hit a little, not bad, but only as a result of breaking my rule,, never try to catch a falling knife... Brian
so, i'm wondering what type of trading strategies will Bright let you do? does Bright let you short as well as buy? as you can see, i have no idea about prop firms, so i want to know of them before i join, maybe mr bright will ring in and let us know, thanks.
Of course our traders go short, long, delta neutral...it takes a full arsenal to make money in trading. Pairs trading is probably one of our more successful strategies...and you have to be able to be long a couple of $mil, short a couple of $mil at various times. Don