Obviously, we hope for the best. But I think you do not realize how small your chances of success is just going into a prop firm and expecting to make a go of it. it is not 50%, it is not 20%, I would say you are in the several % category, if lucky. I STRONGLY suggest you study the Prop Firm threads on ET and quickly get an education on what happens to traders in their prop firm hopes and dreams. If you do not produce, you will be flushed quickly. And the good traders there rarely pass on their knowledge. And you find out the fine print once you are in. And as for them taking a cut of your profits, most traders such as yourself will not have much in the way of profits when you start. And it usually takes thousands of hours and quite a few years to learn profitable trading. then many of those people who THOUGHT they learn blow out an account or two. In reality, less than 1% of traders in the beginning will ever become a successful, longterm trader. That is why I said, better to get a primary job, and learn trading on the side. You need TIME to learn to trade. $15K is only a down payment. But, good luck. I have a feeling in the not too distant future, we will be hearing tears from you or else you will be disappearing.
Thanks but this has been a long time coming for me and i have friends that are professional traders so i know the horror stories if this doesn't workout for me i'll find a career somewhere else. I've been told that turnover ratio for new traders is 99 percent. So i definitely know what i'm getting into.
Didn't any of your so called professional trader friends tell you that you'll need a business plan for your trading?
Do you mean managing risk isn't that what you learn while trading? Most of them had parents with money so they had all the time in the world to get it right. But this won't be the first time i'm going into a job that i know i won't make money in the first 6 months or even ever. The last place I was at didn't let me have a life let alone a second job so I was just looking for ideas on what I can do now that I can work nights and weekends.
How you expect to be profitable, where is your edge... what asset class, timeframe, # of trades each day. Obviously in your first couple of weeks there you'll need to figure this out before wasting time. How will you work up to trade size (i.e managing your trade risk) at your firm so you can pay your bills in a way that is logical, controlled, etc... You'd think your firm would have a plan for you to make this happen. (the vast majority of prop firms it should be noted have absolutely no plan for themselves other than generating commissions ) If I owned a prop firm, I'd share the specifc goals of the firm, in a business plan for the traders, and ask for them to share theirs (i.e how is trading going to be compatible with your lifestyle as it is while you learn the art and science of trading). But you don't see that in the "prop trading" field. Its easy to see why.
Yeah one of my friends has talked to me about that but I think they want me to get used to trading and using the software that's why they want me to start off with 100 shares. Most of the traders in the office have been there 5-7 years so I think that's a good sign.
I don't know why someone would want to give up a salary when you can trade the same while working. Where I work everyone trades their PA during the day, some folks have a whole monitor setup to watch this. Someone is always watching TV, checking news items, economic releases etc, and we feed each other this throughout the day. Plus you get to learn stuff on the job.
Thats cool but as a friend of mine once said you go to a prop firm for the leverage as well as lower commissions on trades. Plus my last job wasn't salary anyway it was all commission.
Well if you want leverage on single names there's always the option market. And if you want to be levered in something else there is always futures