Pampered or humble beginnings

Not sure if this thread will develop into anything worthwhile, but I’m curious as to what other people think about the following:

After reading about the demise of G. Gekko, and reading about the woes of other young traders, it got me thinking about what these particular members childhoods were like/how they were raised. To be more specific, did their parents give them everything they wanted as a kid, did they have to pay for any of their education, did they work(real job, not organizing files at daddy’s/mommy’s office) as a kid? Even more, are they trading with mom and dad's money, or their own?

It seems that many young traders cannot pull it together emotionally and cannot handle taking a loss. You also see a lot of poor money management and I wonder if this may have anything to do with their past.

What are your opinions on this? Could you members elaborate on your pasts/how you were raised, and how, if at all, you think this has affected your trading ?

I’m not looking to get into any arguments or pissing contests over this. We don’t need a repeat of Sen. Robert “KKK” Byrd vs. the former Treasury Sec. Paul Oneil over humble beginnings, although that was quite amusing.

I’ll post my take on this below.

 

I've also wondered where all these young guys got their initial capital to begin trading just out of college, or even during college. I would think that a good percentage of them do in fact get their first bit of cash from Dad. I know that for me, coming out of school, there was no way I could have dreamed of coming up with even the minimum (10-15k) needed to get rolling.

With that said, I'd think that many of these young guys never had to work at a real job, and therefore can't truly appreciate the opportunity to be self-employed, therefore the discipline necessary to trade succesfully is often lacking.

Good trading.

 

I had my first job when I was 8. I had worked at over 20 paying jobs before I was 18.

Newspaper, housecleaner, yard worker, farmers market, storage room, warehouse order filler, door to door sales, sales clerk, fixing computers, desktop publishing... etc etc etc.

I also paid for my schooling, room and board in a foreign country when I was 12 years old. It was a seminary in a third world country. While I was there, I ran out of money for some bare neccecities... and I used to wash other boys shoes by hand for 2 pesos a shoe. Thats the equivalent of 8 cents. Thats how I afforded my own soap, toothpaste etc.

However, I didn't stake myself for trading.... someone else did. I was 22, now I'm 25. Pampered I am not.

 

I also paid for my schooling, room and board in a foreign country when I was 12 years old. It was a seminary in a third world country. While I was there, I ran out of money for some bare neccecities... and I used to wash other boys shoes by hand for 2 pesos a shoe. Thats the equivalent of 8 cents. Thats how I afforded my own soap, toothpaste etc.

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That's the saddest story I've ever heard. Anytime you want to clean MY shoes, there's two bits in it for you. That's three times the cash! Seriously though, I bet you are more succesful trading than 95% of those your age, because nothing has been handed to you.

Good Trading.

 

I do not trade for a living, but I do trade, and I have funded every penny of it. I have been trading for three years, first stocks(swing and day), then some options, and within the past year, futures(day only). I have managed to keep the account positive and have started to see more consistency in my trading over the past six months. I believe that I would not have had the patience, or worked/studied as hard/much as I had/do, if I did not have the upbringing I did. Sorry about the / 's.

My parents weren't wealthy and I wasn't spoiled(not implying that all wealthy parents spoil there children). I've been working since I was 13(you can get away with that in the small towns like the one I grew up in), and was taught the value of money and work ethic at an early age.

I understand when some people slowly lose money, take a break to make corrections, and then come back after a while, but I don't see how people can just blow out an account and run through money like it's nothing in such a short amount of time. The money cannot be all their own. It is my opinion that MOST of these people had few responsibilities growing up and probably never had a real job until they graduated, or still don't have a real job.

I would like to add that I don't think I'm perfect. Of course I've made mistakes with my money(trading and other), but these mistakes have not been repeated.

I would also like to apologize for the " Robert "KKK" Byrd " statement in the first post, I don't want this to be political in any way.

 

first of all, there has been no demise of Gordon Gekko. i am not done. i know many successful traders probably had their low points. i'm just at one now.

i'm not gonna get into my whole life story, but i'd say my early childhood was middle class. during my teens, my family was probably upper-middle class, but my parents worked hard. my father has worked hard his whole life.

as for myself, nobody ever handed me money to trade. all my money was money i made. until i started trading, i had jobs since i was 16. at one point i had 2 jobs.

i really didn't want to get into this, but... in another thread, OPTIONAL777, based on nothing, concluded i have problems with my parents?! he couldn't be farther from the truth. i get along great with both my parents and always have.

 

I retract my statement about the your "demise." We'll call it a break then.
Don't mean to kick you while you are down.
Thanks for your contribution, I was curious.
Good luck getting back into the game.

 

no problem.. thx.

 

Very interesting topic. I have to say that although you make quite a division on background to current money management and trading success, it might hold some truth in it. No one likes to be on the wrong side of the fence, but I value the correlation that you're implying.

I started trading with my parents money when I was 18. When I was a child, my parents had nearly nothing, living in government housing and always having to take the bus. However, in the past 10 years, my parents have done well for themselves and I have benefited from it financially. They paid for a bit over half my university, plus gave me money to trade with. I played the dot com bubble and made and lost everything. Since then, I've jumped back into the market a year ago and went through my second blow up. I held 3 different non-trading related jobs since 18 so I would like to say that I do know the value of money. However, when it comes to trading, my record shows that my money management skills could use a lot of improvement.

I'm still in the game and I know what my weaknesses are. One day, I do want to be making a six figure income consistently for the next 10-20 years. However, that requires me to develop the discipline to do it. I admit that I am currently an unprofitable trader.

Does my story help support your theory?

DNAJ65000

 

You say that being spoiled is a detrement to traders for whatever psychological reason. But, what if it could be helpful? A good trader is detached from his money, correct? So being spoiled and not knowing the value of a dollar could make it easy to be detached.

Certainly if one is too detached and, as a result, takes crazy risks, that is a bad thing. But a certain amount of disregard for money as a result of spoiling could be a good thing, no?

As for me, I don't trade now precisely because my parents won't give me the money and I can't get the money myself. But when I turned 18, I lost about $2000 in the market.

The truth is that I didn't work hard for that money, and I wasn't terribly sad to see it go. Perhaps if I had worked hard for the money, I'd be scared away from the market forever.

I guess what I'm saying is that spoiled children have less emotional baggage when it comes to money. Therefore, it's probably easier for them to be less emotional when it comes to trading.