okwon, i'm not averaging that.... those are my winners. Probably averaging between -10 and +10 cents as I often find myself up gross, but down net.
I suggest that you do the "test of the trader": Go to the Brooklyn bridge. Wait for a boat to pass under and throw your 10000$ on the boat. If you can repress the feeling to persue the boat and recover your money lost then you have perhaps some chance to become a real trader .
No matter how much you study, read and simulate real-time trading, real lessons will come from the pain induced from seeing your account approach zero. This will force you to start studying yourself along with the markets. Years and many $10,000s later, you'll finally master yourself and be ready to profit from the endless opportunities in the markets. 1) Find yourself a good broker with low commissions like IB. 2) Risk small for each trade, so while your account-->0, you'll be exposed to the markets longer. More bang for the money. 3) Make sure you have enough income to support your trading (tuition) and living expenses. Chinook
Good... at least you don't have a wife and kids that you must support... this is half the battle... live cheaply, and try and build up your reserves further... then go for it... My answer would have been very different had you said that you have kids and family commitments...
Hi GFoB, forget stocks and investigate fx â online foreign exchange currency pairs trading. My broker of choice is fxcm.com so I'll use their example, but many of the online brokers offer similar products. Minimum account size is $300US. A mini lot, think of it as a contract, costs $50 to trade. Pips/points/ticks on the EUR/USD are $1/pip, USD/CAD is about .75cUS/pip. fxcm provide realtime price quotes and several free charting programs. You can open a 'demo' account that's funded with $5000 ? to practice trading; the demo trading station accepts your trades in realtime just like a 'real' account using the same quotes as the real account. You can short as easily as long the market. The EUR/USD which probably has the highest trading volume averages about 100pips/$ per trading session, and is akin to a stock index. fx trades 24 hrs per day, Sunday afternoon till Friday afternoon. The same technical analysis applicable to stocks and futures works with fx. Because of the low per mini lot margin, the 'potential' to increase one's trading account is high. I'd suggest that you think in terms of opening a $500US account and trade day-to-days, ie a buy and hold of trends, not intraday trading. With that amount you would trade 1 only mini lot. I am not suggesting you open an account tomorrow, but after you've researched the subject of fx and decided that you preferred fx to stock trading, and understand trading theory. You can anyway open a demo account without obligation to open and fund a real account. Go to fxcm's site, open one of the charts and see what the trading ranges are for the EUR/USD and USD/CAD during the previous 12 months, and work out how much the price moves from one week/month to the next. I recommend that you purchase: âElliott Wave Principle : Key to Market Behaviorâ by Frost and Prechter originally published in the 1970s, the last edition is 1990 I think. EW is the only price movement theory I've studied and found to be 'useful to me'. It is not in itself a trading system, but should, if it appeals to you and you 'get hold of it', give you an understanding of the way the market moves. If you visit the 'Currency' (?) forum down below you'll pick up some fx info, and visit moneytec.com which is the best dedicated fx forum on the web. Wallace.
That is really good advice. If you are analytical like myself and really like to take time to learn a subject you can do it without the pressure to produce. You can keep the income from the job and the job gets a lot easier as you learn about trading and start to realize some second income. Much of what you learn from swing trading will apply to daytrading if you ever want to make the switch.