I started experimenting with trading in September 2013 and started trading seriously with $1100 in July I reached $8700 by November, I deposited another $4000 to my account and upped the size. I have high 5 figures now. I do however believe that I was in the right place at the right time. Since I didn't have much capital to start with I fell into the currency market where the commissions and spreads wouldn't eat into my equity. I basically started to capitalise on trends that started developing from the moment I got in the game in EUR,GBP,JPY,AUD,CAD against USD. I would leverage up anywhere from 10-50 times and ONLY short the majors against the dollar. Since the trends were so strong I would almost never get stopped and wake up with a take profit executed. I held my trades for 8 hours - 5 days. Depending on leverage. My strategy is basically trend following and having stops wide enough to maximise my odds of profiting instead of getting stopped. However I tried the same strategy in stocks and got burned quickly, lost about 10k. I realised I am only good at trading currencies,gold,silver and indexes. I would love to get backed at a prop firm where I heard the odds of success are higher than retail. Any tips on how I go about this ?
In a nutshell your trades during the last 9 months have primarily been long the US Dollar. Why bother with a prop firm?
I have had small gains in gold silver and indexes but ya mostly long dollar trades. I want to get backed with capital and make some real money.
So you have a short track record based on a very smooth bull dollar trend. That's not going to get you OPM. Show that you can do it for at least a few more years through trending and non-trending markets and I'm sure you would have a better shot.
So what? In Sept 2007 to early 2008 I was up nearly 2,000% aggressively buying and being long Eurodollar futures, then in one day down 60% on an adverse Fed meeting day. Subsequently, I was aggressively short stock futures for most of 2008, but suffered on sharp bear rallies. The moment I gave up my short, which was right after the news that the Fed was going to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, causing a sharp bear rally, stocks completely collapsed. From peak to trough I lost 90% of my equity, eventually giving up on futures trading. Lesson? Don't think that short term performance means anything. You have yet to be tested by a difficult market environment. Macro was pretty terrible from 2011 to 2013.
You found a trend and you rode it well. This is good but does not make you extra special, as you said, you were at the right place at the right time. What makes you think you can repeat over and over again to do make you extra special ? This is what someone who would hire you would ask before they do.
Indeed. If you make big returns you need nobody. Trade your own capital and keep ALL the profits for yourselve. Working for others will create obligations too, and maybe they want insight in your secrets..... The fact that you want to find capital somewhere else, leads for me to the conclusion that you think you were lucky, or that you have doubts about your trading success. Your trading history is way to short to be representative and to conclude that future will be very bright. I would not be interested in investing other peoples money. Most succesful traders or investors who use a company, are almost always the major, or even the sole stockholder in this company. Look at Soros and Simmons.
Apply at some firms and see what they say. If they say no, then keep trading and developing your edge. If they want a longer track record then try back again when you are at that level. No matter what anyone says the only way to find out is to give it a shot. It's definitely not easy to get backed by a firm anymore. Or take your capital and go to T3 or somewhere and get leverage. Maybe after you are profitable and consistent going that route, you can inquire about being backed. I think their minimum is 5k to 10k. For 10 to 1. Good luck!
You managed to multiply your account many fold, congrats. you did this using 10-50x leverage, which is fine (well maybe!) when trading v small. But let's say an investor gave you a million to trade, are you really going to take 10 to 50 million dollar positions??? I would advise you take your high 5 figure account and try to 10x it. if you succeeded, that would be interesting to investors. Of course, if you managed that you would surely think why you need investors anyway...