How to be a trader for a company?

Preach it to the choir! Haha! Being a college student myself, I see this mentality all too much around me. I see the merits in having a degree, if I'm really into working for someone else's agenda and money (which I will say has it's own advantages), but I still believe that the A students become teachers, the B students work for the C student managers, who all work for the guys who got fed up and quit college to go build the companies that the other students work for.

The flip-side, I love college life! I love being a fraternity man (no, not a frat guy, a fraternity man, there is a big difference). I love being surrounded by beautiful women. I love my time here. I just don't do it for the same reasons that everyone else does.

I feel bad for people like my room-mate who are so narrow minded and conventional that he could never fathom the idea that he could start his own venture. I guess what I'm trying to say is this: "I congratulate you those who have just graduated. I'm just sorry to say that you have spent the last four years of your life preparing to fail, for 98% of you will wind up either broke or dead when you get to be 65." I'm sure that quote's not exactly verbatim, but if you know it, please share.

Thats a powerful enough reason to stay in college in itself!

a) do you need to be in college for that to happen and
b) not that I mind being surrounded, but if that's all there is (i.e. them being around to look at only) then that's not much good to me either ;p

Oh trust me, I had a pool of fun back in those days, and I sure got drunk and laid more than I'd dare to confess to my current sentimental partner, but I reckon college should be more than just a four-year-long party. You know, like a boiling pot of non stop brain storming where the craziest, silliest, daring, hair-raising, disgusting, hilarious, most brilliant ideas of society should pop up from. Instead, I just found a bunch of daddy's kids too keen on climbing on the social/financial ladder and too averse to the "aahhh to hell with all, let's just do it!!!" spirit.

They are in Market Wizards for a reason.
Very, very rare people indeed. 1 in 100 million.

Talk about rarity, people who trades for a living IS relatively rare (hence the high percentage of people going broke from trading).

thanks for the advise guys this topic is pretty knowledgeable...keep going

Trader888. Thanks so much for sharing with us out of your experiences and also helping out for mentoring. I know you cannot help everybody on one-on one bases, but could you please make your excellent posting coming and in that way you will be able to even help more people and also for soon to be traders who are joining this board on daily bases. Thanks so much for your time and a giving spirit. Regards to your family.

Yes people who trade for a living are indeed rare. The guys in Market Wizards are even RARER. There's many people making a small living trading the markets, but only very few will succeed like the market wizards guys. It's great having big dreams but one needs to be realistic at some point.

You're a grade-A jerk.

And the correct term nowadays is women.

Shame on you. I can't believe no one has called you on this.

Yes that comment had a sexist ring to it.

Which part of "managing other people money to get rich faster" is unrealistic ? People do this kind of thing everyday. They gather their friends and family money and trade. Eventually they start their own mini funds. Or simply they join the banks and trade for them.

To trade or not to trade other people money, is just a matter of preference. Either way is fine, but saying either one of them as "bad idea" is wrong. You never know what their motivations are when they trade.

I see what you mean. Personally, I know lots of people who have traded friends/family money, it usually ended in disaster lol. I shouldn't laugh.
I wasn't saying it's a bad idea, the point I was trying to make is 99% (or more?) of people aren't cut out for it. Some make it, of course. Good luck to you.

Trading other peoples money is a bad idea unless you have years of experience and have been profitable for a few years. Work for a bank is extremely hard because most banks do not allow you to trade a personal account even when you are not at work. You get paid a salary and for the first few years that salary is near nothing. After the first few years you will either get fired or promoted. The best way to trade is to trade from home.

I apologise if this has caused any harm. I really did not intend it to sound sexist and will rephrase it : "women please do not bother"...

I do believe in honesty and why should I invite women if I know beforehand that I am not going to work with them. No, I am not biased against working with women and its called jealousy. See after living and breathing trading for so long my wife has come to hate it. I approached her on my idea of being an informal coach and she agreed but knowing the intensity of trading and the time that traders have to spend with each other she insisted on me not coaching any women. See she knows the amount of divorces we have seen between traders over the years. Yes I know its a trust issue but I forgive her for this and why tempt it if you can avoid it. We are all just human.

So again my apologies and remember the market does not care who or what you are it treats you the same it treats me.

Hope this clarified.

In my personal experience, I have found it is better to trade your own money and be your own boss. And if your going to have investors, please be careful. I had an investor, I turned $20,000 into 27,000 in the first week, so she threw in another $80,000, in this venture I had a partner and I got really sick for 2 weeks and came back to find that my partner had lost $90,000, that was a hard one to explain to the investor. Also, I have a hard time with makeing someone else more money then I make when I do all the work. Say you double the investors money in the year, but you only get 3% of that? Get the hell outa here. When I used investors funds, I would give them 20% return for the year and everything else I made was mine to keep. But my recomendation, just invest your own money you dont have to answer to anybody and have such a freedom its wonderful.

Apology accepted. In context, it sounded as if you had something against the notion that women could be successful traders. But this makes things clear.

The hardest thing I find is to convince "traders" not to use technical analysis. Now I'm not saying its useless, it can be used (very profitably) to time your entry into a movement you are targeting. I have not yet seen anyone using any technical analysis "setup,system,method" profitably consistently. I think this forum proves that. Yes I have seen traders at the bank use technicals but they don't use it consistently as entry exit method. They use it more like a crutch. So they have a feeling to go long they look if we are trading above the 200 ema and they go long if so...Next time they will feel to go long look at the macd see a positive cross and go long. The way other traders use it is to see: "ahhhhh, the 10 and 20 emas have crossed up so lets go long". This also gives rise to the idea of "beginners luck" -while trading your demo account you make money but as soon as you start live trading you start losing. The "beginners luck" is just because you haven't done whatever you are doing for long enough for the market to change character into a monster that wont work using your technicals. (It is in part also because you stand impartial to paper profit/loss as opposed to actual money on the line...but I have said enough about that)

There are currently hype on many systems but if you go back in history you will see many systems starting quickly and then dying off just like the hot-ones at the moment are getting a lot of attention.

Remember -a technical tool is derived from the market price - without a market price there can't be any technical tool. Thats why technicals lag actual market price. Why do you need a technical tool to tell you to go long after a pullback if you can clearly see that the market is making a pullback and now you can go long. You don't need RSI or MACD or whatever to tell you what your eyes say. Remember the long GBP I spoke about earlier in this thread? That entry was so obvious when it pulled back to 2.0090'ish and then just spiked up to 2.03ish. Yes it took guts to take it at that level as it could pull back all the way to the figure (2) before bouncing BUT YOU DONT KNOW THIS AT THAT TIME. All you know is there was a new monthly/yearly high made and I am now not at it, at the moment I am pulling back from it. If you have a feel for your market you will know how many pips pullback you will be comfortable with before entering with the trend. Remember as a trader you don't get paid to "wonder" whether the pullback will go deeper, you get PAID for taking RISK! Now if the pullback went deeper you just cut a bit off your position until your 2.0 (perceived support) is reached and then you add when it starts going up again if it does... It takes some getting used to - to not add to a losing position - but everybody seems to be averaging down as the market goes against them. Do the opposite and get paid for taking RISK.

The real "trick" to trading is to mix your fundamental view with a good technical entry level. Intraday this is almost impossible as you wont know the overall bias for a specific day. The GBP will probably go and test the 2 level again (probably after making a double top) but I don't care about selling the GBP at the moment because I am in a long upward trend. Should it go back to 2 I will start doing something there - I don't know what I'll do there because the political/economical etc. climate could change by the time it gets there. If the climate is the same as now I will buy else sit on sideline or short. At the moment I am positioned (and positioning) so that I will make some cash as long as the GBP close above the 1.98 level on 31 December 2007. If you trade long term like this the stress is less and the probability of success increase slightly.

It takes many hours of reading and getting to know your market before developing a feel for it, the "feel for it" is subconscious i na certain way. Many people are unwilling to develop their reading skills because they want a technical tool that can quickly tell them what position to take when. Such a tool does not exist because if it did it would have been discovered by someone more clever than you or me very long ago. This makes me think of when options was still "unknown" and many traders made milllls out of it due to mispricings etc. It was a money cow. Nowadays everybody is clued up and its much more difficult to make money on options. So the holes were plugged just like it would be plugged should a magical technical indicator suddenly appear.

This is just my opinion and please remember that I am a statistician so it is very hard for me to accept that technicals is not the answer, its just a crutch.


I am sorry to the people I am not contacting via PM, but I have answered many.

Trader888,

Thanks for your words of wisdom.

Trader888,

Once again thanks for the detailed post, I have read all of your posts and they have more valuable information than some of the 400+ page threads going around on FF.


Question: Are you taking in any more members for coaching ?

I'm more than willing and eager to join your group, and it comes at a perfect time for me too, I have worked real hard to set aside some funds for trading and can support myself through the coaching period.

Please let me know,
Best Regards,
-Chris