keep paper trading till you are successful for at least 3 months. Don't make any unusual trades and only trade 1 lots. you need a good foundation before you risk real capital. i have written a book on all the ins and out and my struggles trading. Let me know if you want a copy of it.
Agree, the ES is a bitch without question. I would just start with stocks that are "in play" buy strength, sell weakness. Basic but effective with disaprin.
Work 2 jobs for the next 2 years and keep following the market. Cut all your bills as low as possible and live dirt cheap. Save up $50k+, keep a part time job and join a prop firm where you have some connection to other traders.
I was completely surprised to see all the help I received on these boards.... I definitely understand the differences between paper trading and real trading- slippage, commitments, etc My stock market dreams started long ago as I was 12 sneaking around a trading room (possibly filling an order sheet or two =) )... From what I am reading, there is a HUGE chance that I will fail in my first year- something I understand and if I didn't realize I would be going into blindly. I would like to minimize that risk as much as possible- I have enough backing to sit and paper trade/learn for at least the next two months without worrying about expenses. I have set up my trading computer in a spare room in my house and my expenses are minimal. I have just finished my masters from the University of Florida and with the job market the way it is, the situation I am in, and my desire to make a go of this, I think I have what it takes to learn this. Aside from prop firms, if anyone else has any suggestions for beginning (books, programs, etc) please mention them! Ideally, I would want a professional trader looking over my shoulder for a few months, but I doubt that is happening. At the moment, I am reading Day Trading for Dummies, The Truth about Day Trading Stocks, and a few different news publications daily for the last few months. Again, thanks everyone for the help so far...
ok - you sound like serious enough not to be a troll.... so in order to save an unknown young man's future.. here it is... go get a job! It's very urgent (especially you have a masters)... The longer the lapse after your graduation, the tougher will be to get a job. The market is tough out there, but you still should do everything you can... send MANY resumes everyday (I am talking hundreds a day)... ask friends, relatives.. join social network sites, contact employers, recruiters.... do whatever you can. So you have a couple of months without having to worry about expenses.... spend every minute of that 2 months looking for a job! In life we always have priorities... right now, job searching is important, and urgent! This trading thing, maybe it is important to you, but is far from urgent. The market will always be there. If you truely have a master's degree, I hope you have enough common sense to see the picture here at this juncture of your life.... if you don't even have this bit of common sense, then forget about trading, you won't have a chance anyway. Sounds harsh, but take the advice anyway. 5 years from now you'd be glad you did.
2 months is not even close to enough time. You either need another income source for at least 2 YEARS or a situation in which someone is helping you out financially (parents?). You will see just how fast 2 months will fly by, and with the enormous amount of info needed to learn to trade successfully, you'll find that 2 months wont even scratch the surface.
I like this post because it gives you a good clue about how many losers there are on ET. Only losers would tell a new trader to quit, cause they themselves are losers. My advice to you is to have 10k-20k to start day trading ES. 7k is to shallow, if you are trading for 500-1k a day, a couple bad days and you will not have the will power to recover, u need more ammo. Then trade 2 lots, 1 lots are pointless because you will never be able to learn how to position size i.e. adding to winners, and dumping losers. Ideally, you will want to be able to trade 2-4 ES contracts as a max position, then just learn how to add on to winners correctly and dump losers. If you are taking 2-4pt losses, your winners should be 2-4pt or more. Add on to a position when you have a 4pt winner and it comes back to a 2pt, then add on if you think the trend will continue. You will become better over time, just start small and be in it for the long run. GL newbie
To the newbie - be careful about 'advice' like this..... refer to my first post... a 'stratosphere trader' may think he is a 'winner', while fooled by randomness. To the poster - if you have a little common sense, you see this 'advice' from you offers no value to the newbie, and can only have detrimental effect on his future.