Strong words tlatoani, but motivating. I agree with you because at the end of the day the decision rest heavily on our shoulders. But i think why people seek advice is the fact they want some closure or idea to move on with their decisions!
a question for the experienced traders who've been thru several up and down cycles of the markets. please tell us how the bear markets affected your trading style? (I assume you'd trade more on the short side than the long side? and how did the bear markets affect your bottomline? (I assume your ability to generate profit would shrink quite a lot? Thanks
bear market never affected neither trading style nor the bottom-line (if it would that should indicate that so called trader is not much different from the general public and his so called method is nothing more that bull market....) what affects the trader and his bottom-line is reaching the limits of the method (it may happen in bull market or any other market) if those limits are known to the trader then its psychologically easy to deal with them, but if they are unknown (new) then it becomes a challenge - you have to stop trading and develop the method further...
Its not macro bear markets that are always the problem. It's personal bear markets. Every strategy is long some risk factor. And there are times that risk factor isn't earning. If you are trading risk arbitrage, you are generally market neutral but you are long deal flow and stable financing markets. If there aren't deals or there is a financing crisis, it's unlikely you will earn much. As a career trader, you will have to manage through the lean times.
I'd quit the job and use that time to run backtests and read charts. I'd probably stay in school and trade during the morning session. Perhaps take classes which can help in the advancement of trading such as statistics or programming. I'd also apply what I'm learning by creating systems and running tests on them -- building algorithms and back testing, optimizing etc. I've found methods that I hoped would work forever -- thought I figured it out and then deteriorated over time bringing me back to square one; those discoveries ended up being just pieces of the puzzle.
I only have 3 classes left so i might as well finish them, the whole algo/programming side of trading is something i neglected, since what i was doing was working well. It just seems so foreign to me and completely new that's quite intimidating at first glance. I began working on a secondary system about 2 months ago that's been holding up well which I hope i can develop into something similar in the next year. I will also be getting about 100k from someone close to me next week so its a very exciting thing for me. Take care guys, I will keep you updated.
Apo99, Ive been a member of elite trader forum for almost a year now but haven’t posted anything but after reading your thread and saw what you said about “I rather make 75k a year trading than making 150k working in an office” really struck a core with me. I feel compel to share with you my story and experience as a full time trader. I started in the stock market as an investor back in 2003, and over the years I have always dream of becoming a successful day trader. I knew deep down in my gut at an early age that my life was going to be somehow be revolved around the stock market. From 2003 to 2010, I tried to day trade part time in between school/ many odd jobs and failed many times. Each time I try to day trade I would do it for a few months, lose a few thousands and drop below the 25k requirement and stop for a while. I would save up money and it over again and again and again. Prior to becoming a full time day trader, I graduated with a business degree and instead of doing the conventional 9 to 5 after I was done with school, I played online poker for 6 years professionally from 2005 to 2011. In 2010, two of the biggest poker site “Full Tilt” and “Pokerstars” pulled out of Washington State because in Washington it is a felony to play online poker. I live in Washington State but still wanted to make poker work so I went to “Ultimate Bet”(much smaller poker site) to continue to play poker. In April 15, 2011, Black Friday hit the poker industry by storm when the big online poker sites said that they will pull completely out of the US market. Ultimate Bet went under and I got robbed for about 21k from the money that was in my account, For all of 2011, I had a mortgage, unemployed, and had no income. I felt lost and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I had other very personal issues that I was dealing with at the time which I don’t want to go into, but in short, I hit financial and emotional rock bottom. I had a couple of options; 1. Continue to play poker and grind a living playing live poker at the local casinos. 2. Go back into the work force and do sales. 3. Dive into day trading full time and put my life savings on the line to go after my dream of becoming a trader. I went with option 3 even though everyone in my family advised me not to. They said that if I continue my path that I would lose my house and everything I have (I had about 150k saved from poker). I figure that I had about a 25-30% of making enough money to survive after my living expenses. I know that these are terrible odds but it was enough for me because at the time I was single and I didn’t have anyone depending on me. I rather lose everything I had then not having a shot to go after my dreams. I spent the next 2.5 years of my life in complete isolation from the world to study stocks except for the occasional visit to my parents’ house during the weekend to get a breather. I’m happy to say that in 2016, I’m still trading and am making a decent living doing it. I’m not saying what I did was right because I would never choose the same path if was in the same situation today because I now have a family but I just want to share my experience with you guys. What it took for me to finally trade profitability was to put my life savings on the line and go all in without any backup plan. Here are my results since I went full time: 2012: Made about 28k-- working more than 100hrs a week. I was still bleeding money monthly because I wasn’t making enough for mortgage and living expenses. 2013: Made 100.2k—working about 75 hours per week. 2014: Made 203k—working about 40 hours a week. This is my break out year when things finally started to make more sense to me. 2015: made 258.1k—working about 35 hours a week. 2016: So far up 309k---working about 50 hours a week. I have a family and kid on the way soon so I’m very motivated to work more. What I like about Elite Trader forum is that it’s an outlet for me to honestly share my experiences about my job with my peers while being anonymous. Also, I really enjoy reading and learning from other people’s post on here so I thought I would share some of my own personal experience as well. In the real world, I hardly ever say anything about my job and always reply the same way whenever anyone ask me anything about trading, “I love what I do. I make enough to live”. Apo99, I think you are way ahead of the curve and should continue to keep doing what you are doing. Since you are close to finishing school I definitely think that you should finish your degree first because it will be hard to go back to school once you are in the work force. The only thing I would recommend is that you should consistently think of new ways to trade or make money if you are afraid that your current system wouldn’t work one day. Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket. To this day, I am a little bit paranoid that one day I would lose my edge and will longer be able to do trade so I’m actively thinking of ways to make money/trade. But when I put things into perspective, I try not to worry about things that is not within my control, I realize that each passing year as my bankroll gets bigger and bigger my risk is getting smaller and smaller because I’m starting to diversity my money. I pray to God and Buddha all the time that I can keep on trading profitability for many years to come but, I’m also confident that once I get to 1 million dollars I would be able to figure out something else to do if I can no longer actively trade. I wish you the best of luck and hope that your transition to becoming a full time trader is a smooth one. For me, I can honestly say that I love what I do and I thank god/Buddha all the time for allowing me to do what I love so much and make enough to support my family.