Hello Everyone, I am 20 years old. I have been trading since early February of this year with a small portion of my father's self-directed IRA. I have dropped out of College to pursue a career as a Professional Trader. Since I began trading, I am down for the year, roughly 35% on my father's account and we both agreed that it would be best for me to stop trading live. So now I trade strictly virtually. I have had some very big wins early when I started trading bursting my father's account up 40% within a month and a half on some risky bearish directional trades and ever since then, a lack of discipline and poor money management has brought me to where I am now. Consistency is king in this business (from what I've researched) and I was not a consistent trader, it took much research to really figure out where I was going wrong. Nevertheless, I have not lost my drive to pursue this as a career because I know failure is necessary at times to make myself better at anything. I have been working 40+ hour weeks just trying to save up money and I have enough money to put in for both training fees and a minimum capital requirement to join a trading community/prop firm. I want to join a Prop firm where I can trade options remotely, I don't envision myself daytrading equities and I don't plan on applying to a firm that stresses volume. I want to join a firm that has a real vested interest in their trader's success. From all the firms I have personally researched, many have mixed reviews. Is there anyone here, preferably an active member of these forums who can direct me towards a few good Options Prop Firms? I have been looking into Maverick Trading and I was just looking for a few more firms to look into that specialize in Options. There are just so many names out there. Thanks in advance for any meaningful response to this thread.
Not only go back to school, but make sure you pay back your Dad as soon as you can possibly can, and never take money from relatives to trade again unless it is "pocket change" for them.
what you should do is take advantage of people like yourself. make some option payoff graphs, say "be long premium", offer 100s of setups and zero in on the ones that were profitable, etc there are tons of option trading firms; any firm that requires training fees and capital is called a brokerage
Golden rule #1: just go your own way, whatever others might tell you, always trust your own instinct more than anything else. Learn a programming language and a trading API (for example the IB API). For research and studying the markets, backtesting, filtering/ranking, writing your own strategies you need a platform with a programming language and market database, check this product: http://www.amibroker.com/ Study also the BlackScholes formula and write strategies with it. Don't waste your money for trading courses and similar garbage, learn it yourself by reading books and papers, closely following the business news, researching on the web etc., and especially by writing simulations and performing backtests, ie. you need to find your system, your edge... Improve especially your risk and money management skills, as it is key for successful trading. Use so called "neutral strategies" instead of going just one side...
Theres nothing about school and a degree that guarantees any sort of success. The only thing I can count on is thousands of dollars of debt. I'm not here to argue about the subject of institutional education because everyone has different beliefs on the matter, school just isn't for me. I believe in hard work in anything you are passionate about. I'm not passionate about school, I have a passion for trading and I'm going to continue to follow through with what I believe can work. I don't care if anyone thinks I am possibly setting myself up for failure, because in the end its all on me and the effort I put in. I am mainly looking for a trading community so that I can plug into and learn a proven system to make money. I also want to join one so that I can interact with other traders who trade with a similar approach.
Theres nothing about school and a degree that guarantees any sort of success. The only thing I can count on is thousands of dollars of debt. I'm not here to argue about the subject of institutional education because everyone has different beliefs on the matter, school just isn't for me. I believe in hard work in anything you are passionate about. I'm not passionate about school, I have a passion for trading and I'm going to continue to follow through with what I believe can work. I don't care if anyone thinks I am possibly setting myself up for failure, because in the end its all on me and the effort I put in. I am mainly looking for a trading community so that I can plug into and learn a proven system to make money. I also want to join one so that I can interact with other traders who trade with a similar approach.
There is no proven system that will last a life time, any statistical edge that you would learn would decay relatively quickly. Change is the only thing certain about markets and the only way to remain profitable is to keep innovating. Options trading, as an exclusive activity, is very mathematical and, in proprietary setting, very statistical. It's also good if you can program so you can do your own simulations and back-testing. These days, to become a successful options trader you need both formal education as well as "osmotic" learning. A formal education in mathematics, statistics and computer science will allow you to quickly learn new concepts and do your own research. Once you have the skill set, coming up with profitable strategies is not that hard. I'd agree with the others, go back to school and finish your degree. The days when you can drop out of high school and get rich quickly by being an options market maker are long gone.
If you can self-teach yourself probability/statistics and programming then I really don't think it's necessary to go to college. Maybe take some courses at a community college to get started. I could be wrong, but I don't think that most people are using advanced calculus. However, if you're just trading like an addictive gambler, not basing your strategy off of math, and you're not back testing your strategies you're most likely doomed to fail.