There is one thing about your post I don't understand Hitman. You say you don't just want to learn about the market during trading hours, but also want to learn something while you're not trading. But nothing stops you from doing this on your own right now. I trade for 7 hours hours a day and then spend 4-5 hours a day and some of the weekends doing nothing but examining charts (with and without indicators), and looking closely at every trade I made that day, locating each and every point where my trading was less than optimal, and seeking to learn more about how that particular trade should have been handled better. I'll come at it from dozens of different angles, and nearly always learn something significant from every one of my losers (and a lot of my winners as well). Just for fun on the weekends, I'll spread out 50-100 indicators on various S&P TFs from the past few years, familiarizing myself with the nuances of each of them under various market conditions. It's been estimated that a master trader, just like a master chess player, and a master painter, has access to approximately 50,000 nuggets or chunks of crucial information that cover a myriad of situations he will face doing his thing. In my opinion, you don't accumulate those 50,000 chunks by getting a CFA. You do it mainly by actually trading of course, but also by examining chart after chart, trade after trade, indicator after indicator until you begin to grasp the multiple nuances of the game. You learn to draw automatic and instantaneous trendlines in your mind's eye for instance, you learn to recognize many dozens, even hundreds of critical patterns as they are forming and unfolding, you learn which indicators apply best to which situations in which instruments under which market conditions, and perhaps above all, you get a deep feeling for the flows, the waves, the swings and zigzags of prices. All these things can be learned not just during market hours, but on your own time pre and after market ----- and while books can help with some of them, and perhaps a class or a seminar on a few others, there really is no substitute for just watching and watching and watching charts yourself. The better you get at that, and the more you absorb from simply looking and then seeing over and over and over and over, the closer you'll come to achieving whatever dream you wish for in trading.
Hello Hitman, First of all, i too would like to thank you for all of your excellent posts to this forum. With respect to the CFA program, Babak is correct in that direct work experience in the field of financial analysis is required for completion of the designation. If you have general or specific questions regarding the content of the program itself, feel free to send me a private message and i can address them. In as much as trading is concerned, however, i would also voice my hesitation with respect to the program's overall applicability. Good luck Mav
I have to agree with those that suggested night classes. I'm nearly done with getting my Finance degree at SFSU and over the past year many of those questions you asked have been answered. I don't think you can just read a book to understand such a complex issue such as Corporate Finance. You need hands on projects that force you to understand the dynamics of financing decisions. On the other hand I'm taking a class on currencies, and I think that could be learned from a book. Too bad schools require you to have the pre-req's to get into the good classes...maybe a community college would let you skip the boring stuff if you don't need a degree, just the education?
Hitman I think YOU know what you should do. The suggestion of the CFA program or something similar may not be for you. But I have this "crazy" feeling you should maybe look into "some" type of formal education while you trade. While it seems others do not believe strongly in its value (are they more focused on TA and/or Monikers?), and it will take a long time to finish a degree or formal program, but you will not regret it. You will not be able to tell a future employer that you "read some books."
Hitman, You may find out that what they teach in college is often presented in a very boring way and almost useless for practical purposes. However I do think it' s better to have some kind of a formal education in finance and economics to see the big picture and for your own enlightenment. I am myself a self taught student in economics , take a look at these two classics that I would say will teach you most of what you need to know : Economics by Paul A. Samuelson, William D. Nordhaus Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers; Hardcover These two books are required readings at the best colleges around the world. Another title you may already know: Trader Vic I and II by Victor Sperandeo
I am 22 also, if you want some good efective learning sites have a look at www.stockwasp.com they have a simple aproach of displaying a chart breakout before it happens also the www.lion.com for free resurch and bigcharts for technical analysis.
I am going to start part time classes in Baruch (a city university of New York) toward a degree in finance, next semester. Instead of reading book after book after book I suppose I may as well go to school and actually get to network and socialize instead of lock myself in a room and cram away. Armanian: Thanks for the tip, I need to develop some sort of "training session" that I do regularly to get a better sense of the chart . . . Can you explain what do you do as a part of the research routine? I don't think I am doing effective enough research . . .
In my opinion you are doing the right thing. In addition, you may want to look into some of the offerings at the New York Institute of Finance.
For what it's worth Hitman, I do have a rigorous post-trading routine that I follow every day: 1) I note key Support/Resistance levels on ES and NQ, chart them and then commit them to temporary memory. 2) I construct several Fibonacci grids (using pre-programmed indicators for retracements, extensions and projections) for ES and NQ, chart them and then commit the key levels to temporary memory. 3) I look at 3 indicators I don't use during real-time trading on 30M, 60M, Daily and Weekly ES and NQ charts ----- MACD, RSI and ROC (Rate of Change), seeking bearish and bullish divergences, as well as positive and negative divergences. 4) I look at $VIX, $TRIN (3,5, and 10 day MAs only), $PCRATIO, and the Rydex Ratios, plot Bollinger Bands on these charts, note any CVRs (Larry Connors' VIX Reversals, covered at tradingmarkets.com) ---- to get a precise sense of market sentiment. 5) Finally, I look at every trade I made that day, noting all of them in which I felt I traded less than optimally. I'm not talking about perfection ------ only a God-like intelligence can trade perfectly -----but optimal trading, which means the best possible trading a highly skilled human being can hope to aspire to. Like everyone else, I often fall short of optimal trading, and, perhaps unlike many, I attempt to reconstruct every less than optimal trade I make in detail, to see just how I might have improved, and what I can learn from it. Today happened to be an exceptionally easy trading day ----- there was just a single stretch from just before 1PM ET to just before 2PM ET that posed any problems at all. During that period, I made 2 slighly less than optimal trades, giving up about 1.5 points on the ES I didn't have to (even though both trades were marginally profitable). I spent about 10 minutes on each of those trades, concentrating on the reactions of various indicators vis-a-vis swing highs and swing lows in that period. In choppy markets, which that was, you have to develop a fine sense of subtly shifting orientations around pertinent swing highs and lows, and I'm still honing my skills in that exacting aspect of the trade. But the final two hours were about the easiest I can recall in many months ----- there was nothing whatsoever to do except watch your handles rack up. So a routine that often takes 4-5 hours on a tough day to complete, was done in barely 90 minutes today! Perhaps other traders could post any routines they follow after regular trading hours close, it might be of interest to those trying to develop their own ideas. .