Yes thanks for the response. Have you been able to go fully time yet? Any advice on what to study I will need. I definitely feel difderent or feel like I have an edge but that's just because I have the numbers to back it on my simulator, I'm positive everyday. I don't know I guess it just eventually goes crazy at some point? It seems with stop losses and and proper statistics practices/risk management you can make it. Do others not think about this and that's why they fail or is there something I don't understand?
Reading blogs and some books doesn't hurt but don't expect to get many ideas from books. Learn programming. Spend time coming up with trading ideas and put those to the test to see if they hold, repeat until something shows promise. Yeah, I'm full time.
Wow that's really awesome you are full time, I'd love to do that. What program do you use? And are you with a prop firm or do you use your own capital?
Okay you can make $150 a day on a demo account, a huge 1 at that, restricting yourself to what you could trade with a 2.5K account I will presume! Okay doing it with a real account is harder, emotions, fear, greed. The only way to see if you can make it, is to put the 2.5K at risk and try. Topstep = SCAM don't waste your $$'s and time on that 1. Do IT! trade in your free time, even if it's only 30mins, make your $150, that will add up, soon trading at 2x's the Lot size, so $300, so on and so forth, do well, increase the time you can trade ?, trade off phone / tablet maybe while working ?? depending on your style. I'd not bother with Prop firms, just not required, growth potential is enough, to just not require it.
I agree, I'm personally not a fan of prop trading firms . -- But then again, I've always been a lone wolf-type of person. Just trade your own account. I see no value in joining a 'team'. (...to me, has much more negatives, than positives.)
Sorry, but you are utterly mistaken if you don't think discretionary trading is possible. To the OP: Trade the Asian markets with contracts like the Mini Nikkei and Mini KOSPI. Use those to practice until you can get good. Once you are consistent and have saved up a lot of money with your job, you can trade larger and until you can move onto the US instruments and take some time off from work to get used to those, and if you are comfortable you can probably quit. This is a long process though, obviously.
Maybe you'll get some ideas from my history... I studied and finished a Finance degree, currently work in banking. I also worked in Prop Trading for 3 years and made good money in the volatile times post GFC. The conclusion I reached is that while trading is hard it's even harder when you rely on it as a sole source of income. This is due to the added pressure it puts on your decision making when you take a loss and can really cloud your judgement. I work full-time in banking making great $ which means all my bills, mortgage and anything I want is comfortably paid for. I started trading again part-time 10 months ago. I decided I didn't want to risk a lot and wanted to trade the market's money rather than my own. I've done very well starting with $10k investment.... I'm now up to circa $130k. This is completely cream on the top for me and I have a feeling if I was relying on this for my survival the result would have been much different. After withdrawing half I'm just left with market profits which I aim to turn into a much larger amount. I've always been interested in the market from a young age (first traded when I was 15). I've been interested in risk/reward, psychology and various games. I play chess, hearts and spades on-line and have played poker (live) for a long time. As I'm very competitive I try to win everything I put my mind to. I believe that these provide really good psychological and strategic training for Trading. Lastly the most important thing is your ego... lose control of this and a big losing trade is just around the corner!
Started with around $30k from a family member. For him it was either investing in a fund with measly returns or try something slightly riskier with me. I use an old version of Wealth-lab, perl and Python. The simplest and cheapest option nowadays is probably Amibroker though.