thank you. may I know if you trade stocks (assume to be the least risky) or derivatives / forex ? day trade / swinger? if you successful in starting in small business what makes you decided to jump into active trading?
anyway I am not from the states (US) that makes me eligible to trade CFDs... is CFD trading less riskier then stocks? or perhaps penny stocks? I mean CFD is really a futures contract with your broker right? but it does help to minimize risk?
I do believe that in the long run we can see ourselves earning a really good amount of money in forex without any problem, only if we are constant in learning through forex forums. I would also like to see myself earning good and earning well in forex.
Yes, indeed. Here is a thread that demonstrates what consistently profitable trading looks like, trading with a precise business plan based on positive expectancy. The guy's plan had an overall win rate of about 48% and his profit target was twice his stop loss. I observed his trading in real time for the better part of year (long after he stopped his journal due to spamming) and he has a trader's mindset unlike anyone else I've known, other than Ammo here on ET. He called all trades in advance with stop and target because he used stop orders to enter trades. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148752
Trading is far more difficult and as a result far more rewarding. "Ambrosiadou, who grew up in Thessaloniki, in Greece, founded Ikos (which means âhomeâ in her native language) in 1992, âwhen the hedge-fund industry was still in its maverick adolescenceâ, she told reporters. The fund, which began as a foreign exchange trading account with little more than £60,000, was conceived as a money-spinning sideline to her business career. A chemical engineer by training, she achieved early success at BP, becoming its youngest-ever senior international executive at 27. Her fortune is now estimated at £200million " http://www.sail-world.com/cruising/index.cfm?nid=62871&rid=11 http://yachtpals.com/maltese-falcon-7053
Forbidden You don't have permission to access /maltese-falcon-7053 on this server. Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.10 with Suhosin-Patch Server at yachtpals.com Port 80 so I guess it should be better to focus my effort on a business?
In all the discussions I've seen about failure rates of traders over the last two decades not a single one has been grounded in common sense. 1) Why would I regard some college kid that has not dedicated even 500 hours to study and SIM screen time has $1,000 to open up with some Forex firm in the stats? He's not a failure he's a freakin' imbecile that was at a casino six months earlier and bought a couple of lottery tickets three weeks later. Would we regard the guy who bought a van with the vague concept of doing light moves of furniture and cleaning out yards in the stats of business failures? Him and his van with 135,000 miles on it wouldn't even show up on the radar of new businesses. 2) Why would I count some 65 year old guy who worked at a job that never, not even for one hour out of one day in a 45 year career, had a real thought or figured out anything of even moderate complexity? He is now retired to Florida and went to a five day HOW TO TRADE course. He failed in 1966 when he picked up his high school diploma and was thrilled that, except for a tabloid or Hustler he would never have to read again. His mind has been comotose for 45 years and now he's head to head trading ES against educated people who trained at Morgan or worked at Goldman or Miller Tabak. He needs a freakin' psychiatrist not a get rich quick trading course. Hand that man a prescription for Viagra and the number of a 24 year old hooker. It is certainly better spent that way than trading 6E. The guy doesn't know where Europe is. 3) Why would I count most guys who work full time and think they can do this from their job and even their cell phone? Maybe 3% of them can actually pull it off but of course when people talk about those that failed they include the 97% who need to dream at night under the covers not daydream their way to a dedcuction on their 1040 for what they lost. It goes on and on. Yes, there is a very demanding learning curve and few will make it but let's always try to look at only guys that approach this seriously. Not children or dillusional retirees. Not illiterates and people the lottery was designed to soak. Not guys who do not understand what a positive expectation is. This is a serious endeavor so lets use serious attempts as our sample and write the rest off as the equivilent of the high school footbal player who dreams of the NFL. I bet 15 or 20% of those that approach this right and make a serious investment to learn it conceptually and then folllow that up with three or four thousand hours of screen time make it. Not so different from the rest of the world. Serious people have a chance to accomplish serious things. The rest weren't serious to start ... they had no chance.
Swan Noir raised some excellent points here. Let us try to put this in a different way: 99% of all professional traders either fail or underperform their benchmark. I think the numbers may be worse, like 99.9%. But that does not mean you should not try to become a professional trader. Even while underperforming you can make a lot of money.