My trading Career

Discussion in 'Professional Trading' started by CPEMSPT, May 11, 2007.

  1. subban

    subban

    Stop while you still have your savings. Otherwise your wife is just going to leave you. Unless she is some kind of doctor making six figures then I say keep trading.

    You could try one of these decent prop shops and find yourself a mentor to diagnose your problem.
     
    #11     May 13, 2007
  2. What you're doing is irrational. One should only trade if their returns are greater then buy and hold. That's the only justification for the increase in effort and transaction costs. If you can't even beat buy and hold go back to the drawing board and park your cash in some fund. If you would have bought an index fund you would have made six figures last year...
     
    #12     May 13, 2007
  3. if you have hundreds of thousands to blow, why are you trying to day trade? it sounds like to me you have a pretty good occupation to make a living, day trading doesn't really sound like a dream for you, start some other venture.
     
    #13     May 13, 2007
  4. ggoyal

    ggoyal

    having hundresd of thousands of dollars is not a big deal anymore. yeah if he had millions then u would be fine. but if he has a couple of hundrend thousand, he is perfect to start day trading.
     
    #14     May 13, 2007
  5. Not with that kinda track record m8
     
    #15     May 13, 2007
  6. TraDaToR

    TraDaToR

    As you're trading full time and not really young, 1 year 'til profitable is good, 3 years is OK but 5 is too much. So stop and go ahead. Move on to another thing. It's better for your family...

    If you really mind, try to program an ATS in your spare time and when it's OK, release it just to RECOVER what you lost.

    Sorry to be so crude.
     
    #16     May 14, 2007
  7. DHOHHI

    DHOHHI

    Per your attachment you've lost on average over $33,000 per year for 5 years. That's pushing almost a $3K/month loss. Many "traders" I've observed over time seem to do much better in bull markets, in part I think because many (aspiring) traders are programmed that way due to "investing" over the years. Since 2002 we've been fairly bullish so your net P&L is worrisome to me. It suggests you've not developed and fine tuned any strategies that can make you money in a trending market. And whereas you've shorted a fair amount of time to make it as a trader over time one needs to be consistently profitable trading both sides IMO.

    I stated full time in April 1996 with $90,000. My biggest drawdown was about $40,000. That 40% drawdown was of great concern to me. I worked at finding ways to trade most any market and ultimately did okay with profits growing each year.

    My suggestion to you is that you need to start trading smaller and going for some winning trades, no matter how small the profits. If you've survived and continue to feed you family over the past 5 years with the $167K loss then I'd think that making small profits consistently (say a few thousand per month) would be a lot more desirable than the almost $3000 per month average loss. Your confidence will build over time as you become consistently profitable and then you can gradually increase the size of your trades/
     
    #17     May 14, 2007
  8. mde2004

    mde2004

    You lost that much and expect to make money going forward. :D
     
    #18     Jun 17, 2007