career as a professional FX trader for hedge funds, banks, etc

Yeah, and if you like to sit in a room all alone with nothing but computer monitors, go for it. There are others who would like to exchange a word or two with a colleague they are working with

If you are just looking for people to exchange ideas, you can always come to FF or any other trading forums. Plenty of people here and we are all your colleagues except the few trolls. You don't need to be face to face with people to exchange ideas with. But this still does NOT change the fact that trading itself IS boring. If you can't stand the boredom or can't find ways to cope with it, then maybe trading is not for you. And that's fine. Trading is NOT for everybody.

I don't see why would I or someone else stop trading if making profit? What, because we find it boring. Yes it's boring trading alone and waiting..therefore I don't see what is wrong in trading for a hedge -fund, bank or some other institution as you can always trade for yourself there with your smartphone, and you can talk and interact with other people. We are NOT all asocial like others.

Well you tell me, you are the one who's hear complaining trading is boring and you need to absolutely go to those "institutions" to talk to people "to exchange" ideas to trade. LOL

There is nothing wrong with trading in an institution but it's NOT needed. If you are already working for a company trading, great, but if not, you don't have to be so desperately trying to get in to those institutions to trade. Trading alone is perfectly fine. That's all I am saying.

LOL, I get what you're saying, just wanted to point out the other side of trading. It's not glamorous, as many people think. But a person has to find his comfort zone, whether it is trading alone or for some institution. Just saying

This is my first post in Forex factory, I am far from new to trading, in fact it is all I have done for the past 10 years, I have made a pretty penny too. I have always been too busy or having fun in other ways to socialize in this manner, now I am on my second child and I am a little grounded as the wife will have my nuts otherwise.

The starter of the thread was wondering why no one wants to higher professional traders. Well, I have to say, if you are a good trader unless you want extra capital or want to start a professional fund, you wouldn't dream of working for some. That's just a little regressive. So most people will think you are lousy if you consider yourself successful and then go for a job. FX or otherwise. Anyway the latter portion of career I traded Options (Vanilla), I am doing very well and would not dream of working for anyone, trading or otherwise.

Some of my friends who have made it big in trading as well all think the same one of them has one of these prop shops that prey on naive youngsters. He is happy to bleed them with very little risk. There is like 2 or 3 super stars every year, he has a team of about 9 guys and girls and is now a closed shop but 95% of the recruits all washed out in 6 months. They all needed starting capital but the inexperience clearly showed from the start. It is best to start with your own money. Take the risk from ditch the day job after solid tuition go in with descent capital give 6 months, if you can't cut it go back to the day job and just stay there. Trading isn't for you.

To say you will get hired. That's a dream that will never come true.

I know trading has been so over-glorified in so many movies and shows since the beginning of time. People think it's so exciting and fun without realizing before each "exciting" action that the trader takes, how much data the trader has to go through and the mundane analysis of those tedious data that he has to perform on those data and still might lose everything in the market due to unexpected events.

When is a job at the financial institutions that's always under constant pressure to meet the latest quota to avoid the axe dangling over your head, with one of the highest dropout rate glamorous or fun ? Would you join these "institutions" for the the sake of talking to other traders or exchanging ideas ? Lol. It has to be that flamboyant diCaprio guy who's at fault for messing up the image. Lol

Yeah but they don't show that on screen.

And it's not just that DiCaprio movie that glorified the work of traders and many times even involving illegal insider trading. I can list a whole bunch, Trading Places (illegal insider trading), Wall Street and its sequel (again illegal insider trading that at least got the traders punished), Margin Call, Traders (a HIGHLY successful Canadian drama series), Wolf on Wall Street (traders doing everything illegal from start to finish of the movie) and most recently, The Big Short. At least in The Big Short, we see a bit of the guy painstakingly going over the mortgage data over the years and doing some analysis to find out the crappiness of the American mortgage market but that's like 5 seconds of screen time, the majority of the movie was about various traders putting in high stakes of their money and they had to go to the most glitzy place, Las Vegas to do it. LOL

And those are the images that stuck with the average viewers who most of them have NO IDEA how the financial market works and what's involved. All they see is the excitement. LOL

Reading all 8 pages here i gonna expand on my own experience first im a college drop out by choice im not waisting my time to be and slave working for some corporation for the next 30 years so thats why i trade i drop out in 2006 when i started trading forex i blew several accounts at the beginning including a 20 thousand dollars account in around 3 months i think i blew around 50 or 60 thousand dollars on my first 5 years but i learned a lot now is 2016 nobody knows everything about trading and what its working for me in the same way wont work for u or it might but in an modified way i dont use indicators i only pay attention on price action and of course i watch the big indexes and oil and gold other commodities etc and bonds etc i trade in a room alone with my tv on an several computers and i trade from my phone too but i watch my computers an average of 5 to 8 hours a day every day unless im tired i go to sleep and i dont open positions my style of trading is very aggressive but i dont have all my money on my trading accounts whoever said u can not make 50% or twice every months is not a trader or haven't been trading consistently on the profit side like i said the only limit is yourself of course u cant compound your money forever and i havent get over 100 thousand on any of my accounts because im cashing out my profits and i stop trading for 2 or 3 months at a time when ever i make some good profits and just enjoy my money and i dont work or do anything else since i have no kids or wife so i really dont need too much money to pay my bills and i havent been confortable above 100 thousand something i have to work on it so thats my limitation as right now trading is emotionally busy for me when i intensely trading l dont like to go out a lot or pay too much attention to my girlfriends or get my mind busy with no sense stuff i just focus in to trading for weeks at a time so when im trading im antisocial and i dont like to interact with people , when u spend hours looking at a chart and u see the price moving it tells u something there is an emotional thing there that i get and of course i learn from my own emotion specially when i have big positions in red my advice for every one who wants to trade for a living is start trading with real money and an small account money that is yours never borrow money to trade build your account from little money so if u blow it is not a big deal so dont make the mistakes i did blowing 20 thousand just like that and develop your own strategy dont try to copy from others at least for me that wont work and always believe in yourself and take the the risk or u will never learn