When I was 22 years old, I lost about $60 K and then made $150-160 K within the same week. What is my advice? Be flexible and stay humble.
If you're an applied math major, I'd suggest your focus should be on learning about as many markets/instruments as you can... the idea is to build experience, so that *eventually* (a decade from now?) you'll be able to use your analytical background as your edge. I don't think the scalping/daytrading game makes much sense; you wouldn't have an edge over the unemployed high school dropout sitting in mom's basement. I think UW has a computational finance master's program, don't they? I'd make that your goal.
Oh, and as long as we're sharing "when I was in college" stories... I borrowed $20k from my parents, and promptly lost $16k in about 2 months. Horrifying experience!
Ken Griffen - The founder of Citadel - began his trading career trading convertible bonds with a few thousand dollars from his dorm room. Everyone starts somewhere.
Thank you guys for responding! I will keep some of the things that were said in mind. Everyone needs to start somewhere, no? Even if I lose, I will always gain something from it. And yes, there is an applied mathematics department here in the UW and I was planning on getting my master's in it with a focus in computational finance. There really isn't an "applied mathematics" in UW, but I thought it would be easier to say that than "Applied and Computational Math Sciences" or ACMS . But thanks again for everyone's thoughts and for responding, it really does mean a lot to me. I'm starting to walk on the road to where I need to be to reach my goals.