No way are you hugging me Austin... You are starting to scare me...:eek: I have to go mow my lawn. We will have much fun later...
I will be short because it is offtopic: Quote from austinp: I can think of two accquaintances who both made more than $1mil and lost more than that TWICE in 1999 - 2001. Neither of them trade anything today. So they were trading long in a bullmarket. End of story. Why didn't Jesse retire fat, High metabolism... rich At the time of his death all his family members were nicely taken care of... and happy? It is called manic-depression...Not to mention his wife, who was clearly the angel of suicide, but you have to read the bio... He was also most likely a compulsive gambler...Again, if you want to know how rich he was, you have to read the book. P.S.: He shorted both 1907 and 1929 crashes....Just for that he should be in high regard.
So true, which is why believing nothing of what is spoken and only 1/2 of what is seen makes such perfect sense!
In a major boom, if you are good, I'd say about $10-20k is enough. Similar if you have discovered an effective arbitrage or quasi-arbitrage. In normal or quiet conditions, I'd say about 5 years+ experience at a trading firm or i-bank, and several hundred thousand in capital is about right.
I live with my parents, just graduated college in May. I really don't have any bills and i'm enrolled in a master's of accounting course. I think 5k is enough for me to start trading 1 mini Nasdaq contract on days i don't have class.
I trade FX with about...well, 1-2 lots max, so I trade with 150-250$ and last week exceeded my goals and made about $400. Believe it or not, I am "making it." I pay my expenses with my profits. But I can't afford to hang onto losing trades for more than $50 and at max $100. (this was all learned the hard way, through "tuition" payments yes, painful, but rewarding in the end..) It doesn't matter how much capitol you have, it's about your skills and draw downs... I do not lose more than 50$/trade on a total 2k account..that percentage is 2.5%. If you have 100k, you wouldn't want to lose more than 2.5k. One million? Do not lose more than 25k per trade. my buddy, took 4.5k up to 39k... he is still at 39k and had good luck as well as good mental slate, skills, and mentor.. I wish I could say I started that good in my first month of trading, but whatever you do...DONT GAMBLE! Keep it real