Been trading for 8 years or so professionally. High volume trader of CME futures. 35 yrs old. Married with a child. My question pertains to investing and what others in my shoes career-wise, do with their earned income. I know traditionally they say to be more aggressive with investing at an earlier age and as you get older to become more conservative. I suppose the traditional approach would be to put my lonely in institutional funds that are mostly long equities. My thinking however is that I already take risk trading and that I don't want to take more risk on the money I've earned trading. I'm curious what other traders are doing with their earned income. Real estate? Preferred stocks? AAA-rated bonds? What are some good alternatives to cash, if I am not interested in the volatility of your typical equity funds that a bank/investment advisor will put me in? I'm hoping we can get a good discussion going here with some alternative investments or good approaches for those of us who are self-employed traders. Thanks for any insight you can offer to the discussion!
you're kidding right? 35 years old, high volume with a wife and kid and you don't know how to buy an index fund?
how bout, "Someday I hope to be a successful high volume trader on the CME and when that happens what then should I do?"
Keep your risk and expectations low, especially in the current environment. Make a nice mix, with a focus on low risk investments. Like 50% fixed income funds, 20% property/real estate investments, 10% equity funds, 10% structured products, 5% metals/commodities, 5% cash/ money market. To spread/ reduce your risk even more, dont do all of this with one bank, spread your investments over several accounts with different banks.
Nope, not kidding. trading and investing are entirely separate endeavors. I'm a good trader but I wouldn't consider myself a good "investor" per se. I never had the interest to spend any time or effort seeking out/understanding the options available to me and have always deferred to the advice of financial advisors. I'd like to empower myself to understand some options that may be alternatives to what the advisors typically recommend.
You at perfect age, I started at age 21 and buying one 3 bedroom/2 bath/2 car garage, after couple years bought 2 houses each year, mortgage for 30 years, and rent them thru Hud Section 8 if you can. Find out first how much money they have for area and what they are looking, you usually get most of rent directly from Hud and if tenants do damage, Hud picks up fees. But time to 65 plus years, houses getting paid off, you trying to defer taxes by paying off slowly till retirement years. You new hobbies will be taking stuff apart and rebuilding, LOL. Tax lien notes I also do, been buying farmland through auctions, water rights, yes sir I sell water in Texas for farming, invest into small ideas for businesses, where everyday folks need each day/week/month. PM me if you want some other ideas.
...What's there to say ...you and everyone more or less already knows the typical/boring not sexy answer...like you said...first you have to make it by being relatively risky...then once you have it, be more safer...something along the lines like just letting it sit and grow steadily in the SPY ETF fund.
Invest? compound your trading! as long as one are trading small potatoes (ie. below $2m) one should compound the shit out of ones account so one grow the stack as speedy as possible.