Quick intro: In mid 2008, after reading 10 books or so I fell in love with trading, the realistic, crude, merciless nature of the game captivated me. So I started trading with my own account using a ridiculously low amount of money, with the intention of learning. I've made only 10 trades in 3 months, all day-trades at the long side. I was a total noob and could only play long because I didn't have enough to play short, anyway, the results weren't bad. After those 2,5 months I finally started to break-even and of course, I learned a lot (is impressive the amount of good info you can get from only 10 trades). Ok, continuing. In the meanwhile my father lost his "job", so I had to give up my ridiculously low amount of money for the family's sake. That was it. The plan was to keep studying and reading books until I get my money back and then some more, in the form of start-up capital (my father used to make a lot, so my expectations were realistic). In the meantime, I read Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom and reached the conclusion that I was completely dreaming and there was no way in hell I could succeed with the amount of money that I was expecting, I needed at least triple, and my father couldn't find a high-paying "job" like before. That triggered my "time stop-loss". I won't be getting start-up capital anytime soon (if ever). So now I have 3 options: 1 - Start working in a soul-crushing job until I got the money. I'm college drop-out (advertising, biggest mistake of my life). Working at something I really deeply hate will take 3-4 years of 9-5 without spending a single dime and having to life with my parents until I am 26, so theeeen I can be a trader, if I'll be a profitable one, then that's another story. 2 - Sending resumes to hedge funds. Considering that there's only a tiny chance I'll get a interview, I was thinking to offer a 1 month free-trial sort-of-thing, in that case I would have to wake up at 5am, take the 2 hour bus trip to Sao Paulo (the financial capital of Brazil) and work for free for 1 month, if I'm bad they can fire me, if I'm good they can also fire me or maybe, I can get a chance. I would love to do that, I don't care if it's hard as long as I'm doing something I really want to do. The problem is that I don't now I can convince them to free-trial me without a real track-record of even a bachelors degree in something irrelevant like economics or business. I got a trading blog, a unusual one, since most blogs in my country say generic things about technical analysis or what to buy or sell, I could use that. This option leads me to... 3 - My father knows and works with some really rich people, I could try to use his connections, talk about a start-up with those people. I'm pretty sure some of them would listen to me, but if they know that I worked for free waking up at 5am and stuff then they will be sure that I'm dead serious about this, and then I can tell them that I wouldn't give up because I liked it so much and so on. I can try to use that to convince them better, or I could end up making my dad look bad which would be terrible, and unfortunately, probable. Ok, that's it. I would enjoy some kind of input. What should I do? Offer me for free (to convince people I'm not a retarded kid who wants to get rich quickly)? Get a job and save up until I can start? Or just reach the rich folks and say: "Hi, you don't know me but I'm ...'s son and considering that he helped you out big time, I was wondering if you're interested in a start-up?" TIA
I want to respond to you because you wrote you are a college drop out. But I got disappointed after reading your dad is rich-semi-rich. I was hoping you are facing as tough times as me. Chances are when things get really squashy you'll just run to daddy. In any case. At this point you don't even know what you don't know. First of all you do have one very good thing going for you. You seem to be honest with yourself as I see from your post. This is incredibly important in becoming a trader. None of the big egos make it in trading. You have to be able to look into the mirror as I like to say. Big egos can make it as shills and fake gurus and website promoters and trading actors but not as real traders making a living from trading. Second thing that you MUST have regardless of what many here will tell you is a lie. You MUST have above average intelligence. You have to smart enough to grasp the reality of probabilities. This is not as easy as you think. You have to be able to understand what is randomness and how to spot it and how to be able to tell what is NON randomness. Once you understand this simple yet complex topic on randomness and non randomness. You can become a successful trader.
http://www.michaelcovel.com/2009/10/30/top-female-trend-follower-leda-braga-of-bluecrest/ Become better than her, and you can be whatever you wanted to be.
HRT... Maybe you think i am crude but you need to face it. you need some real job. I am not discouraging you to meet your goal but for now you really need a real job and real experience and money. you need BULLET... I am no professional trader but have work for a trading firm for half a year, and fail... in my opinion, 10 trades is not enough for experience, and only buying long, you have limited yourself opportunity but of course maybe that is your perfect setup for you and only works for you. Also, the market is changing all the time, so you do need extra money to cover your loss.
You don't have any real trading experience. Nobody will hire you to execute trades because of the probability their "free" hire will get "expensive"... fast. Be honest with yourself. Even if you did have extensive personal trading experience and a history of profitability, funds aren't necessarily hiring. You best bet would be to get a job doing some back office clerical work for a fund.
I agree get a side job and build up your capital, you don't even need a huge amount to start off with. I've gone and saved up just doing some random chores for the parents really. Now I'm on my way to getting back that money I lost when I first started trading and learning because I was frugal with my money.
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. To clear that up, I'm not semi-rich, actually today I'm kinda poor. We always had crappy clothes (today with holes), crappy electronics (my imported acer 5672 has no HD since 2007 so I use a live-cd linux distro, I can't save anything, my computer is like Guy Pearce in Memento) and no money at all most of the time. My credit is completely screw up because of unpaid retarded bills which I had to make for family's sake, and I'm only not really rich because they never learned a single thing about money and I learned a little too late for that event. The books? Rich dad poor dad and the millionaire next door to name 7%. Anyway, they used to make a lot and spend a lot in stupid stuff. I was sort of like them before, but then early in 2008 they screw up big time and we kinda went broke, since I had no computer and no anything whatsoever I started reading books about money, and one of them was Zurich Axioms, which now I know is a stupid book. After that I read Reminescences... and one thing led to another... you all now the drill. I really misplaced the word "rich". By the way I had a tiny xbox games import business sort of thing that blow up with the 2008 crises. The dollar went too high, my credit was already fsck up and well, that didn't work. --- About the reality of probabilities? Are you talking about expectancy? Ramdoness? Market noise? --- I don't have psychological issues that would make me want to be "the best trader evah", I just want to be one, If I made low money, no money at all or losses in the beginning that's fine, I like it so much that I'm pretty sure that eventually I'll end up getting good at it. If I'm great, then awesome, if I'm marginally good that's also good. At least I won't be waking up everyday day thinking "oh god what have I done" or something like that The thing about a job is that I don't know how to do anything, well, my english is not that bad and I'm actually pretty good with computers, I was the only 14 yo kid at school who used to write games in linux using C and SDL. But getting a job to raise money to start a carrer doesn't seem like a eficient way to solve the problem. It's like starting a carrer to start a carrer... plus, guys, I live in a third world country, starting here without a college's degree is way too complicated, when I say 3-4 years, I'm also being kinda optimistic, if I can make 500us a month, it will be a lot. I can trade with not much money, but I wouldn't be able to apply proper position sizing and the commissions would eat my flesh away, so, eventually I would end up blowing up, it's simple math, you can't win without and edge, and you can't have an edge when comissions are a huge brick wall in your way. I wouldn't be able to buy whole lots either, only odd ones, then the slippage would be a huge problem too... I started the topic hoping (urgh) that someone would point a more elegant, eficient way for raising capital, I could have missed something... don't know. btw I'm a INTP with a very weak P, if that's relevant... ohh, and I didn't play short because you need way more money to be allowed to do that. I would if I could, I 'm actually kinda puzzled by the way people are afraid of playing short. TIA btw2: not sure what happened with my old account... couldn't reply... not a problem anymore.
Get a job through your dad's connections. Try to save some money. To keep yourself sane and learn about trading, open an account and trade mini ibovespa stock index futures. www.banifinvest.com.br has decent rates, maybe you can even find another broker with lower commissions. There's no substitute for experience. Knowing the path is different than walking the path.
I see you have gone from 1st post HRT to 1st post hrt2. If your next username is "son of HRT" then you are making excellent progress as a trader.