I am interested in the age of traders and when they started,i started trading when i was 43 over 3 years ago. Is their an age when it is to late to learn,ie. you cant teach an old dog new tricks. In my first 2 years i was down as much as $80k but got it all back in my third year of trading but the last 8 months have been differcult for me and i have slipped back in to the red to the tune of $7k. 3 questions:- 1)How old were you when you started trading? 2)How long have you been trading? 3)After how many years did you start to become consistently profitable?(if attall)
Did you see the piece on cnbc yesterday about the trader at Bear Stearns who is 95 years old? Has his own workstation and still trades on thier floor. Been with the company 67 years. Pretty amazing, and inspiring. I'm 32, traded off and on as a hobby from '94 to 2001. Didn't make any money until I got serious and started to do it full time two years ago.
I started trading 4 years ago at 45. first two years I really stunk up the place. Had one profitable year last year. This one is break even now. Cathy
1) Started when I was 24 2) I have been daytrading for about 9 years 3) I just sat and watched for my first 3 months. After that I only took 100 share positions. Then I moved up from there. I was fortunate that I was able to follow in the footsteps of a mentor. My mentor was my boss, I was hired as a daytrader, so since I was working for a company; losing money was not an option. I wasn't allowed to lose money. If I did, I was gone. It was okay if I didn't make money, but I couldn't lose it. So, I never lost money. If I didn't have a mentor, I never would have made it. I needed the strict rules to keep me straight. After a while I realize that no one can make it without strict rules. But, all in all, it took me 2 years to graduate with my "master's degree" in daytrading. (I think you get the Ph.D. when you retire???) LESSON: Not making money is one thing, but losing it is another. Trade in a way that you will develop the skills to not lose money. Then you will have the skills to make money. Whenever I'm having tough times, I want them to be about me not making money, not me losing money. "It okay to have periods where you don't make money, but having periods where you consistently lose money is unacceptable." gotta_trade
-I am 21/22 yo now. I started 'trading', that is BHP (buy, hold & pray) at the age of 7, then started actually actively being interested in the subject at about 11, programmed my first trading system at 12 (BASIC), at 15 I won the regional (all highschools) trading competitions, and spent most time with my friend who was a called 'geek', being mainly interested in computers and finance, which is what I was, too. While other boys would call me a freak because I wasn't interested in BMX & Magic Cards, I never really cared (and still don't). I had a thick fur, my passion was greater (I think this maybe a requirement if you want to succeed in this business, anyway), but essentially I was about 60/40 in in my interests of hacking (computers) and finance (trading) till about the age of 19. When 19, I still wanted to be a Systems Engineer / Network Security Expert, however my dreams were somewhat shattered by my trading returns at virtualstockexchange.com, where I was (essentially swing) trading and eventually ended up world champion several times in a row (17XDaily, 6XWeekly,2XMonthly) of about 200,000 competitors, which caused my family and friends to get angry about my reluctance to trade actively. I mean they -really- got angry. Eventually I said yeah, OK, but I'll just papertrade on the commercial platforms (and mainly NASDAQ) until I'm really profitable and then I'll make the step. Now it's been over a year since I started trading with real money. Of course not with losses, though. I think people who let their real accounts go down 80K or even 7K for the year severely lack discipline. If you're losing, don't trade. Papertrade on real platforms. When you (think!) you're good enough (!), trade lots of 100 shares MAX for about 1 year. If that works, you can gradually increase. 7K of trading losses is irresponsible. For anybody. If you had any clue, you should be way UP by now, otherwise dive into the books and papertrade until your eyes bleed. Learn the games. If U trade NASDAQ, for example, learn for how to play with market maker's, learn their games, understand how they 'fade rallies', 'shake trees', do 'spread staggering' and other spread manipulations and how they 'head fake' their order intents. Once they can't chase you anymore, you can turn around the turret and fire back! I don't doubt you can successfully short-term trade a market like that any other way. Remember that professionals tend to take exactly the opposite orders to what amateurs take. -Re whether an old dog can't learn new tricks - Nonsense. This is not about being an athlete, it's about being intelligent and (hopefully) smart. Period. Age doesn't matter much. I know successful traders who're over 60 years old.... Nevertheless, I've read somewhere (Alex Elder's book?) that ppl in their early 20's are best suited for scalping, while slower reaction impairs them as they pass the age of 30. This may be partly true. But then I think maybe that's just 'cause older people tend to be a bit more 'conservative' about trading, i.e. hold on for longer timeframes. Nothing wrong with that. Hope all this elaboration gave you some insights Happy Trading, ~Scientist -P.S: Sorry if some passages come across a bit boasting or self-indulgent - This is not intended, in real life and the markets I try to be a humble person, most ppl don't even know what I'm doing. I have no need to boast. -P.P.S:Sorry for the previous double-post
I am 30. I started 1 year ago. I do not regret that I started late, I had no oppurtunity, because in this part of the world, we have "10,000 times" less number of trader than USA, but i was very lucky to get started and do learn everything on my own. I am angry that i were educating my self how to buy & hold investment, by learning about fundamnetals for 1.5 year wasted my time. I lost $32,000 on my first two month, and had lote of backup cash reveresed for good living, so fear of losing actually was not there. I stoped trading from last sept,2002. and did not trade since then, and plan to start trading next month again with Assent trading. I regain my confidence by learning a lote and saving my money from giving it to you, by this long off from trading