You make some valid points and suggestions that can be of use to me in the future. I thank you for that. I'd like to give you a few more details regarding my trading history. I 've personally traded with real money for one and a half years. However I've been studying the markets way before I've decided to use my money to trade. I became interested in the markets around 2000, around the time my father decided to invest in the market. He bought tech stocks. What a wrong move. Anyways, I got a job as a stockbroker when I was 20 years old. During that time, I've seen the dow drop 200 or more points, everyday. I've seen how bad the market can be. I've been a stockbroker for one and a half years and I've decided sales is not for me. So I went back to school and it's during this time I've discovered poker. I was at first a losing poker player so I decided to buy books on poker to help improve my game. That was a great decision because after months of losing, I've turned it around and became a profitable player. Fast forward to 2003. I have some cash after playing poker and I got interested in investing money in the stock market because the money market rates at that time was EXTREMELY low. I bought this one book, one I think, changed my life. It was called, How to Make Money in Stock by William O'neill. That book basically changed my approach to trading, although I never even traded with real money. It also showed what my father was doing wrong with his trading. He's not a rich guy, in fact his liquid net worth right now is equal my my liquid net worth currently. His net worth got cut in half by buying and HOLDING on the big blue chip tech stocks. After reading How to Make Money in Stocks, I realized what he was doing wrong. He was waiting for the stocks he bought to go back up to the price he bought it for!!!! Fast forward to this year. By this time I read many books on trading. It's too many to name. Currently I'm reading Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications by John Murphy. HIGHLY recommended. Anyways there's a whole bunch of things I left out but I hope you got a gist of what I know about the market after reading this post.
I believe trading is the best and fasted way for someone like me to become a millionaire. Leverage is a beautiful thing.
One piece of advice .... Use proper money management, don't let greed take you over. Remember, leverage combined with emotions can work against you ten fold. It can wipe you out faster than you can say "Amaranth".
are you TexasLimitKing from fulltilt? <img src="http://pic16.picturetrail.com/VOL648/2542213/10830031/195233170.jpg">
oh my ! you mean you were a stockbroker for one and a half year, and you have never read O'Neal during all that time ???
No offense, but I find it very difficult to believe that you were a stock broker, yet you knew nothing of prop firms, and you seem to have just discovered the concept of leverage. It just doesn't make any sense.