Plan B (you'll need it). Subscribe to a data service like eSignal. Pick a highly liquid future you resonate with like a stock index, a bond, an exchange rate or a commodity. Set the software up to chart on several different time frames while you work your day job. Scroll through it in the evening with your imagination fueled by a little booze. See the patterns that have existed since the dawn of trading. Ignore conventional technical analysis. Invent your own. Learn to scalp before the open when the US markets are volatile and heavily influenced by Euro action. Or on breaks. Or during slack time at work. Translate what you learn into an understanding of daily chart patterns and swing trade based on EOD data. It will come. You may be as old as me when it does, but it will come.
Take in count every possibility. But have in mind, that it doesn´t matter how you start, it will take time and losses to get to a professional level. You can chose freedom, or part-slavery, like evo said before it´s a 2sided coin. Every one of them have their pros and cons.
Alas, it is the opposite of what he wants. He hires himself. He pays himself. He mentors himself. He teaches himself. He guarantees himself.
A different path with the same ending . As I said, every aproach have cons and pros: -The one you recommended: freedom and a lot of time to undrestand the markets, you can keep your day job, you would be ableto find a unique edge. Cons, the time it cant take, undercapitalization. -The prop backing option: You can shorten your learning curve, network with a lot of pros, have almost unlimited BP lol, but you give away half of the profit, and you have to play by the rules, just like any other job. -Trade with your money with a prop laverage: you obtain good BP, nice rates, pro tools. But you have to pay for the learning curve, yo assume all expenses and risks. Choose your destiny ,lol
Plan B has numbrous madvantages. You do real work and develop real marketable skills. Trading is neither. Plan B has no Plan C. The market you spent years mastering can evaporate overnight for any number of foreseeable and unforeseeable reasons. Trading all day is not nearly as much fun as people who don't do it think it is. And being a worker bee ain't all that bad. Vacation. Sick leave. 9-5. 401K deferral. 401k match. Social security match. Unhealth insurance. Unattached young women. Only upside to full time trading is that you can drink if you want and shower only on Friday night. That and the fact that I "work at nothin' all day" meant that I didn't have to take off from work to be home for the arborists and the AC guys today.
Not to discourage you but 790 on GRE math is bad, everyone I know got 800. Above stat doesn't add anything relevant to discussion here. I am just trying to impress upon you its too competitive out there. GL
Might I enquire of the Opie what kind of "trading" he wants to do? I mean, writ large, trading is trading, and is practiced in many other locales in the NYC area than in financial houses.
As Rodney Dangerfield once said, "How about fantasyland"! The problem for the OP and his generation of coddled-I-deserve-XYZ -because- I- scored- ABC on some math test is that he knows nothing about hard work. We see it all the time on my desk (do not ask which one), though its usually from the Ivy League brats who have been told that their sh!t doesn't stink because they never left the circle-jerk of campus. You know what? I want to be a pro golfer. I've never golfed before because it is expensive to play, but I'm pretty athletic and know I could be good at it. I just need someone to teach me to play, pay for my rounds, buy me equipment, and then sponsor me on the various tours until I make it. Does that sound about right? Oh, and I refuse to play at the public cheap courses nor will I work any other job that could potentially put money in my pocket so I can contribute to the costs. Thanks in advance. I weep for the future LOL
I want to follow graphs and trade, keeping CNBC on in the background to see if anything relevant is happening.