This thread is really funny. Cracks me up after a long day's work. But what got me into the thread in the first place is really the question for the professional traders out there who trade their own account (and are successful at it). At what stage would one be "ready" or considered to have the necessary qualifications to start a fund ? And for those fund managers out there, how is trading for a fund (other pple's money) different from trading your own? I do not have a finance background but I'm currently trading part-time. Hoping to get good enough to trade full-time, and no, not planning to start a fund yet but just curious.
After years of OUTSTANDING returns, triple digit on a six figure acct. or more and higher returns is the only way to attract people you do not know or are not related to to a fund, trading opm (when actually done and not just fantasized about) can be extremely taxing on every part of your life, investors will not rest until they know their money is safe and making a return. Every other week on ET some newbie who is 22 and wants to be rich now and thinks they can manage money because they "like technology" and apple more than doubled in the last 12 months and they could have easily spotted this because their pink ipod mini is so cool. Every college business class in the world must be filled with wannabe future money managers
Chiang, to run opm you first must have a strategy for making returns on principal that you can eloquently pass along to your investors, this cannot be "I will buy puts and calls on facebook and cut the options that are not profitable"
yes I totally agree that the learning curve is steep and the markets just love this unending supply of this-is-so-easy newbies for them to chew up and spit out (I was one of them). Triple digit returns would be a very impressive track record. Then again, if I'm that successful, why would I add on the stress of trading opm ? Thanks for the replies, this is a great site for information on trading as a career.