I think for most people, the best way to get a trading acct is to have another job, and then start trading really small, while keeping that job. Do this until the acct grows. Of course, its better to have access to a wad of cash at the beginning, or a job offer trading. In my case, I was lucky enough to have a wad to start with, left over from a college fund that I didn't spend. Went to a cheap state school, and my parents bribed me with the cash to do well while in school. So I did, and they gave me the left overs. I still got a job as a broker first though. It was worthless for trading, but helped me ease into it. I then managed to dent my trading fund pretty good over the next two years. Jay
While in college I took $20,000 in student loans and bought Enron at 28 cents just after bankruptcy. I then sold the shares the next day at $1.10 or something like that betting on the pullback. Being ignorant I didn't know I needed to pay taxes on my gains and so the following year I was screwed by the IRS. Rest of the money went into a futures account which was recently on the brink of blowing up but since I seem to have been doing well in building up equity in the account. Taking it day by day now trying to tread the waters with caution.
worked in oilfield,worked on cattle ranches.used my tax return cahs.lived normal not like the crap in traders mag. got "setback" on sept 11.(slightly over-leveraged and over confident) went back to work for a year and now am doing good. i realized it was nice to have backup just in case things happen.
My wife and I are in our mid twenties. We both went to work for a CME/CBOT clearing firm right out of college. We paid all our debt off first (excluding mortgage). Now we save 45% of our net income. We divide that 45% between our trading accounts, saving accounts, and other misc investment accts. We've been able to do a lot more with the combined money we make and save compared to if we were single (marriage of course in a personal preference). In doing so we are still able to eat out every meal (if we want), drive nice cars, etc and neither of us make any more than someone who's just a few years out of college and works hard.
I started as an EE out of school in 1997. Worked for about 3 years right into the tech boom. The company I worked for got bought out in 99. The buyout left me with paper millions. I made a good (lucky) decision and sold most of my stock and bought real estate mostly in CA and other parts of the US. I left about 80k in the market as an "investment" (didn't really trade actively back then) and then lost about 70% of that into 2001 (buy and hold strategy... I still have that account and it's at about 45k at this point). Anyway, my company went under in 2001 as well. Worked as an EE for a different co from 2002-2004 and position traded on the side... started doing pretty well. Never really needed the money from my EE job so I started trading full time in 2004 with about 160k mostly from savings. P.S. I guess I didn't really "save" money to trade but from 1997-2000 I worked 70 hour weeks and lived way below my means (mostly because I didn't have time to buy anything).
I banked with Hudson City Bancorp (HCBK) for 10 years before they decided to go public in 1999. They offered all long time depositors first dibs of $10 per share before the IPO. Not knowing jack about investing and only knowing that the bank has always treated me right for 10 years and that $10 sounded cheap for a stock, I dumped my descretionary funds, all $4000 worth into this stock. After 2 splits and 5 years, my 4K investment was now worth $32,000 Perfect seed capital for a futures margin account...
worked throughout my teens in varies hard jobs while going through college.In the late90's worked 2-3 jobs almost 7 days a week and ate reamon noodles for 2 years (LIKE THAT WAS HARD TO FIND LOL) saved almost all of it for about 8 years made some lost more during the sell off in 2001-2002 started buying leveraged junk bonds in late 2002 china plays gold miners and tankers in 2003..sold them all in feb 2004 and made a killing 100% 300% returns on everything in my port this gave my a pretty big nest egg to deal with.