Hello all, I have read other posts like this one I am about to post and so far I have not seen what I am looking for; So I want to get this from the start: I am looking for actionable, forward-moving steps. I have been trading in the world of stocks since I was 19. I made a good bit of money and as the prophecies of stock trading go, lost it to confirm the long term 50/50 balance. Recently, I have been paper trading options and doing far better than I had ever previously done with stocks. About three weeks in, over 20 trades and I've only had 1-2 negative trades. All said and done, the paper trading account is up about 10k. This to me is very promising. Yes, I know that psychologically, I am walking into paper trading a lot more lenient than I would with my own money; but even still, these results are very promising in my opinion. That being said, I plan to continue to paper trade for the next few months and begin live trading early next year. Given my losses in the stock market, I will be funding my account with around $3k (yes, I know, that is very small, but I don't care). I want to be a full time trader more than anything. It's what I wanted for quite some time and I'm very passionate about it. I know the risks, I've experienced huge negative losses, I understand the environment I'm getting into. For those of you who are full time traders: What steps, strategies, advice, etc. would you recommend to me for attaining this goal? I sincerely thank any one who can provide me with good, solid advice. Thank you.
You can paper trade for 6 months or 6 years, you will always APPEAR to be profitable. Once you go live with real money you'll realize that not only does 50/50 stick but with a leveraged financial instrument like Options or Futures you will lose every penny sooner or later. If you're really 22, you should invest and not trade. Do whatever you want but know that full time "traders" self-funding are nothing more than gamblers who eventually lose it all. Money is precious. If you're sensible you can build wealth from it in the long run. Wealth buys happiness. It also buys family and friends. Nobody wants to be around a broke loser.
A good trader is being Robust / Resilient during bad periods. How to make money is one thing. How not to lose it is another one. If you want it badly enough then I am not worrying about your destiny. Build robust system, trade when conditions are favorable & don't subdue it. Be a Good Captain, then cruise only good ships & with the right conditions. That's it ... Experience is the only teacher. Don't overlook it & Stay Strong.
The market is in an up trend since March 2016 so anyone who is long, especially long call options will be very profitable. To know if your system is robust, you need to cycle through at least a couple of down market/trends to stress test it. Often, I found that backtesting was not an effective way to stress testing a trading system as it is like working on a model when you already know the answer and it is very easy to fool yourself to get the right answer with your model. Good luck.
i would worry about anybody's destiny who is going into trading - "the farther in, the deeper" ... intuitively the OP knows it, that's why he is asking for advice for which no advice can be given that's the difference between the 22 y.o and 52 y.o - the older you get the less you ask for advice - not because you do not need it, but because you understand that its useless for you
The market is in an up trend since March 1916 if not earlier... it does not diminish everything what you told latter , but the point should be it does not matter what market is doing for the working method
I don't buy anything; calls or puts. My primary strategy is to either sell calls or puts, collect premium and (in most cases), let time decay work for me. Because of this, I'm usually not incredibly directional. So long as the underlying stays above or below whatever I sold at, time decay brings down the ask column price and that's where I've been making money.
Yes, no disagreement. If you are an investor and with a 20-30 year time horizon you most likely will be very profitable. But this is a thread for career traders. If you are a career trader your time horizon is short, perhaps months, weeks, days or even hours and minutes. This past Aug/Sept and Jan/Feb down market could wipe you out like Karen the Supertrader if your system is not robust. Many of us, myself included, developed our "trading system" and after some analysis and backtesting thinking it was pretty good. Went live and started making $ until the first downturn.... Peace.
Start by buying rental houses and using weekly bars in stocks and hedge them, Buy stocks with good dividends. Put down 15-20% on 3Br/1-2car garages in lower middle income areas, let renters end up paying other 80-85%, try to buy 1-2 houses a year, you get to learn repairing yourself saves money, in mean time go to school get a degree and get good paying job and keep learning. Day trading futures is becoming you against automation. Learn how to trade chop in stocks, when not chop, it is trending. On weeklies, learn what most stocks do at extremes, then don't take signals, wait for confirmed trend. Don't let people who have failed at their dreams to stop you from yours, but be smart about it.
not necessarily human's lifespan is shorter than one of the market's ... much shorter so in 20-30 years, by the time to cash-in, one may find himself during the deep market correction, one that would erase most of the profits...the correction which in another 50-70 years may be seen as a small blimp...but one does not have that another 50-70 years... one will be done.....