trading sucks. i made 500k in the past 12 months and i rarely trade. Be a long term investor or be a mid term position trader. it saves you energy, time, and you have a happy enjoyable life. i only need to check quotes maybe 10 times a day and i can carry a cellphone and do the check via wap. i can do anything i want, travel to anywhere i want.
Nice work! But how many people has that kind of capital? Your account must be at least seven-figure, right?
What do you all suggest?....I'm 27, self employed and I earn about $150k per year. I'm out in the West Coast and I have the time to trade from my work place. Is it realistic to think i can become a good profitable trader without a mentor or without knowing anyone who trades? Whatever i have learned has come from trial and error, books, seminars, TV, paper trading and real trading. I take notes and try to learn from my mistakes. I have a very strong desire to learn and the persistence to keep at it until i do. I am in my 3rd year since i began diligently working at learning how to trade stock and index options. I asked about the proprietary stuff because if I could make as a trader what i currently do by being self employed; I believe i would take trading in a heart beat but i don't know anything about how big banks and institutions work. Am I better off just trading my own account with my own money? What can I do to teach myself?
Why not swing trade/position trade?? would you have enough time at work to put the odd position on?? giving up 150k a year to attempt full time trading seems risky, i made ALOT more than that last year in my third year of trading but i have also seen numerous people try to make it in this business for 2-3 years and make nothing. Shitty thing about this business is that more work does not necessarily mean more dollars you need certain skillls/mentalities which are pertinent to your success. If i was in your spot id see how well i could do with swing trading. Swing trading/position trading is the same thing as full time trading when you really think about it, just that every thing is on a bigger scale. (i.e. bigger stops, bigger winners, longer time frame, versus small stops small wins short time frame) You will still get a feel for wether or not you are cut out for the market this way. The 150k a year is an excellent backer to get you throgh the learning process of the market, it is alot tougher when you are scrapping for a paycheque and i think this is why most people fail.
Of course it is realistic. As long as you have realistic expectations! Be patient and learn to minimize risk rather than frantically chasing returns and voilà , results will magically materialize seemingly out of nowhere. A good mentor can help, but by no means is a necessity. Read a couple good books (depending on your style, for swing trading equities I'd e.g. recommend O'Neill) and re-read them every 6 months. Multiply what you read with your own trading experience. You wrote that you take notes, that's a great way to do it. On top of that, while re-reading once unlocks maybe 20% of the value of a good trading related book, re-reading them 5 times over a period of 2-3 years gets you closer to soaking up 100% of the book's values because your experience grows in the meantime and you are able to absorb new insights that you previously read over and didn't even notice. Why would you want to work for an institution rather than trade your own money? I don't get it. It's not like they will provide you with any proprietary money making secrets. Yes, they can teach you about discipline and money management, inner workings of different markets (fixed income vs. currency vs precious metals vs energy etc.), dirty tricks and most of all: a job in a big firm over time can get you connected to influential people. Is all this helpful? Yes. It is a necessity. No, not at all. Think about the following: Why are successful traders leaving institutions every year and starting to trade their own (or third party) money? Clearly there is only so much these people can learn at the firms and earnings possibilities being employed as a trader have a ceiling, albeit a high one. My suggestion: Keep working your job/company. Keep making those 150k it will give you peace of mind when a draw down hits your trading. Swing trading equities can be done part time, maybe with 2-3 hours each business day and additional homework over the weekends. The less you watch your screen the better for your returns and stomach. Stick with your own capital, be disciplined, compound gains. Compound compound compound! You're young. If you keep your head clear and you are able to accumulate at a steady ROR of 15-25% a year without a major (!) down year you could ~6-fold your capital within 10 years, all this without taking out-of-this-world risks.
Makloda would you agree from seeing successful traders that the ones who make it, make it because it is almost like a lifestyle choice rather than a job. 90% of people who try to make a go at this come in from open till close and wonder why they dont make money, every good trader i have met (half million plus a year) loves trading and reading about it. You should give swing trading a try and see if you even like doing this, if money is your only goal, and you hate trading i highly doubt you would ever make it. This is not meant as a put down, just reality, i believe you have to like trading in order to make good money doing it. Do not get me wrong there are days when i wanna take my quote screen and throw it out my highrise window, but for the most part i love being a trader and reading about trading, so the work required outside of the trading day is not a hassle.
In a way, yes, I agree. However, I still would see trading as a job in a sense that one should be professional about it and take it very serious ("It's not a game"). But being too dependent on short-term gains in order to pay this months (or last months!) bills is a recipe for disaster, because a dent in the equity curve will suddenly become the reason why one can't pay the mortgage, repair the fridge or pay school tuition for the kids. Lifestyle... I never thought about it that way. But yes, all people I know absolutely breathe this stuff. They live it. It's not a hobby, it's not something you can easily switch on and you switch off (I wish it was, I admire people that can switch off at will, even after a horrible day). So maybe yes, like there are people that are passionate about surfing, being on stage singing or playing chess, I believe the most successful traders are those that are the ones both most passionate about it and most unemotional about it, when they need to. As contradictory as that may sound.
I agree with you 100% i believe you may have misinterpreted me, (i dont know if its the booze in ME, or YOU ) what i meant is you can not treat this like a 9-5 and hate going to work every day and want the day to be over, if you are counting minutes on the clock here you are doomed to fail.
a trader at a bank is in a privledged situation. if you gave that same bank trader a million to trade on their own for a year i bet they wouldn't beat the S&P and probably lose money.