I am an EE, albeit from a home study course. I DID have to derive things and I did learn to find shortcuts and to question my assumptions. Trading is way different. I have spent years trying to corral trading into a quantifiable thing, with some small success I might add. In fact, if I can't quantifiy it to the point of automation I won't be trading it any time soon. The mentality to jump in some pit and start watching the other traders and start throwing my own money around is just not part of my makeup. I watch a lot of the DVD's from Investor Flix and I never see a speaker and say to myself "That guy thinks like I do" so that could lead me to believe that traders aren't engineers. I am however, thinking that with the advent of automation for the little guy that Engineers will be traders more and more, and as the jobs move out of the USA trading is going to be the best career option for lots of folks. I am glad I am ahead of the curve right now.
"It has taken me 4 years to realise that trading is actually an incredibly boring activity when done correctly." So true. I realized this after trading fulltime on/off for the last 11 months. I'm trying to automate everything now. I worked relentlessly for the last year, I got it, but I feel burnt out to the nth degree (don't even want to look at my monitors). PS I'm an EE and it is not true that all Engineers are bad traders.
Does software engineer count as an engineer? I don't make a good trader because I am too used to 1+1=2... now I am getting used to 1+1 does not = 2 but is damn close most of the time. Anyway engineers work hard... I am still doing night-shift software consulting with my old firm because noone in the company is experienced enough to touch the internals of their product in short amount of time. All the good programmers left because they are being mistreated by CTO who can't even code but has the good karma of making big bucks off us. There is alot of mental suffering in both business but at least you don't get kicked around involuntarily in trading.
PS I'm an EE and it is not true that all Engineers are bad traders. [/B][/QUOTE] It seems many Engineers hate their jobs and are willing to take a shot at trading as an alternative. I was a sell-side analyst and hated my job, so I took a shot (haven't regreted it yet). My question is what would make an engineer think that could make money in the stock market???
Confidence, incredible belief in one self and true passion for the markets. At the moment, I'm burnt out. I need some time off. But this is just the beggining for me. My main goal is to have fun, do what I want to, travel the world and live in places ppl only dream about. These are some of the reason's why I quit my job. ozzy P.S You'd be suprised how smart some engineers can be. They can do quite a bit believe me.
Nice...those are noble. I quit mine b/c i thought my employer was clueless (I still think so) and felt i had no other option. Best Luck!
Quite a broad generalization ... and broad generalizations tend to make for bad trading. David E. Shaw, Jim Simons, and Raj Rajaratnam would be 3 of the top performing hedge fund managers I can name - all could be described as engineers turned trading. How about: "Bad engineers make bad traders"?
Very true... We always try to find a better solution but maybe the best solution is just to accept the risk after a while. But I think we still should question things because things do not always appear the way they claimed. Sometimes even the originators of some methodologies were fooled. For example, are you doing better than buy and hold the stocks you are trying to trade?
The only battle that is going on is the woman that is trapped inside of your body. May I suggest SRS surgery to help your with you issues . . .