I started investing on my own in my early 20's, and made $450 overnight on my first trade. My rent at the time was $300. That's all it took, I was hooked. But not knowing where to go from there I sent out resumes to some brokerage houses and got a gopher job at Dean Witter. There I met an assistant that had just spent the previous summer daytrading with his brother. He said in the 3 months they traded they made $200k. I was making $6.50/hr. He pointed me in the right direction and almost 9 years later I still look forward to waking up every day to get to "work". edit: I traded my way through college at SFSU for a finance degree. Looking back I wish I got a computer science degree instead, or as a minor.
My first memories of the markets were on a field trip in 6th grade to the Chicago Board of Trade. We were overlooking the opening of the grain pits, an the teacher was saying how these guys on the floor made and lost hundreds of thousands every day. The excitement of the trading floor is what got me interested.
You do not have a clue. Not one clue. 1. I was read the WSJ thoroughly by someone trying to hire me for a faculty job in the math building of RPI. I found out that salary does not make money; ownership does. 2. The compound interest formula. 3. 10% 4. 6 to 8 days. Look slowly and carefully at these four items. Do you see a major? No. My major was not important. I had four majors in the course of going through college. I had many jobs in college always more than one. I worked my way through and learned one thing: the value of money and what it costs to get through college. All the faculty members in the department (I was teaching 1/2 time with two other jobs and a full academic load) were traders and investors. They regarded salary as fluff, relatively speaking. I got a job for one reason only: To get capital. The WSJ shows price movement. The movement is 20 % in a half cycle. Making half the 20% is 10%. I was told that the middle 10% took less time to make and there was nothing about gambling in taking out the middle 10%. The WSJ showed that 1/2 a natural cycle was 6 to 8 days and that natural cycles was the modus of price movement. I looked at how 10% and 6 to 8 days works in the compound interest formula. I drew a semilog graph since it was logical for getting across a page from left to right. This is a difficult set of four things to get across to anyone. It is difficult to look at a newspaper and see what is going on. It is difficult to see how money is made in markets. It is difficult to see how fast money is made. I found out the newspaper had the information in it. I could see the compound interest formula was what was used to make a graph on graph paper. I could see that 10% was a nice round number that happened all the time all over the place. It said, make a list. I could see that the cycle repeated over and over. I could see the time was 6 to 8 days. I got the paper. I made a master veluum chart of 26 weeks (five columns a week) I put, in eighths, horizontal lines for 17 points on the veluum. And I mad a place at the bottom to plot volume. I was told when the WSJ was read to me that volume was important. I plotted the numbers from the paper onto the chart I made for each stock that changed price 20% in 6 to 8 days. I bought at the trough I plotted and sold at the peak I plotted by telephone with one call a day if necessary. It was hard to make 10% because it made more per cycle. I saved 50% of my salary and put in all I had to start ($300 bucks). I did not take any money out and I paid commissions as extras by mail. My buddy did the same and others joined us where we worked. My first SEC investigation was two 1/2 years after I started. Do you know why I sggest that you do not have a clue? No, you do not. Your posts here tell, in detail, why, how, and what says you do not have a clue. How do 90% of traders fail? It is difficult to explain but you are a terrific, persistent, unknowing example. For reference, find someone like you who has 11,000 plus posts and says the same kind of stuff you do. How many graphs does a person have to pencil in to know how to trade and make money every cycle of the stock's price movement? There is no chance of not making money from the first trade to your last trade when you are taikng out 10% of a 20% move. There were two full pages of rows of stocks in columns. Every day they were listed. How could a person not be able to read the paper and then make graphs? You can't and you will not get a clue for quite a while. if then.