To be the best

Hello ForexFactory members,

I have a number of questions for all of you, in which I'd like genuine answers (no trolling please).

I am 18 years of age. I became immersed in the world of trading/financial markets a couple of years ago. I instantly fell in love with it.

Ever since, I have had a burning desire to become the best, and excel beyond all others in this field.

Some may call what I have an obsession, but what they think is irrelevant. People can call it what they want. I have a passion for this and I plan to pursue it to the fullest.


The further I went down the rabbit hole, the more I discovered my passion for this profession, and my insatiable thirst to succeed within it.

I dropped out of Highschool, and decided to devote all of my time to becoming the best.



Ever since, I have been studying (whether it be literature or the charts) for over 15 hours a day, without exception. In fact, some days I'd lose track of time and forget to sleep.


Mind you, I live in Australia, and hence, London/US open is later in the day for me (London open 5PM, NY open 10PM).


Where do I see myself ? I will open a Hedge Fund and I will win ( Do not confuse this statement with a destructive EGO, as undoubtedly, some of you may point out).


I have discovered, tested, and fine-tuned a profitable system to suit my personality, and have begun building 6 months (Or however long it may take) worth of live statements to prove my reliability and profitability, to potential investors. This will then lead to the acquisition of investor funds, and the beginning of building my business.



My question is to those of you who have experience in this profession or in this field. What do you suggest I do, in terms of specifics, to ensure I get to the top? I will do anything that is required of me to achieve this level of success.

My strengths are in TA, but I have very little FA knowledge. Perhaps this would be a field to study in order to enhance my results?

The reason I have little to no FA knowledge, is due to the fact that I do not trade the news (I trade the reaction to the news). But I make no judgements upon FA. I am not wise, nor experienced enough to know its potential benefits, which is another reason I am making this thread.


As I have said, I am willing to work as hard as it takes. 15+ hours a day of study is a given for me. If you tell me that I need to go days without sleep, then I will do it without question. This is thoroughly enjoyable for me, and I do not see it as work.


Note: My focus is majorly in building my own business. Getting into investment banking, or working for someone else in a proprietary trading environment, is not the direction I want to take myself in. I want to focus all of my energy on my own business, so that I may compete against these firms/investment banks, not work with them.




Also, I have gone through the history of the "Trading Discussion" forum, and read through every single educational/interesting thread I could get my hands on. That includes those that have already asked the same question, such as myself. But I wanted to make another thread to put my situation into context, and ask for advice related to my specific circumstances.



I know there are trolls on this forum, but there are also those of you who genuinely want to help others, and strive to do so everyday. Thank you for any advice you take that time to post.

Path to success is of personal nature.
I suggest you trade live not demo and continue refining your weak points.From your age I think you probably need lot of work on psychology.
It is one thing to know what to do and totally different when you are live in trenches.
This is why demo trading is meaningless.
Start reading from great traders.Money management and continue keeping journal about all your losing trades.Go over them and analyze the mistakes.
Over time you will find your answers because you will be ready for them.

Firstly, thanks for your reply Davit.

I have been live trading for a while. I've also blown a couple of accounts along the way (a necessary event). I haven't demo traded for a long time now. I do not believe it to be beneficial past a very basic stage, as it does not include the huge psychological component of trading.

I have started reading "Trading in the Zone", By Mark Douglas, and have also watched a couple of his interviews. His expertise is excellent.

Also, I spend my weekends, and anytime the market is not moving, trading on Forex Tester 2. This allows me to do something beneficial with my time (perfecting my strategy), rather than staring blankly at charts that are not doing anything.


If I recall, from some of your previous posts a long time ago, you also advocate reading books such as (forgive me if I remember these incorrectly), something along the lines of "Hunting .... in ... Country"?


My question was more about educational specifics that you more experienced gents could recommend. Whether those specifics be regarding improving TA, FA, Psychology, How to increase my chances of getting investor funds, what type of outside education would be beneficial, ect, ect.



For instance, I know a lot of people recommend getting a CTA license (or the Australian equivalent ) ? However, I have also heard that these are not a good idea, as some international hedge funds/investors do not want to invest in people who have CTA's for whatever reason.


Thanks again.

Book is called "Bird Watching in Lion country"
I trade principles presented in this book.Everyone loves high leverage and big lots.Book advocates exact opposite.Smaller lots and smaller leverage.
You can find free PDF on the net.
You are way ahead of lot of 18yr olds in a good way.Jesse Livermore my favorite trader ever started at age 14 and by 18 bucket shops were in fear of him.
I suggest you read
REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR
Nothing has changed much in trading over 100yrs.Same concepts still hold true now.JL basically invented pivots.Read the book you will learn a lot.
Regards

Hi Tok,

I certainly wish you the best on your journey to success.

- Read everything you can on TA and apply it Live and keep very strict records of all transactions.

- Read everything you can on FA and everything you can on economics, macro - economics, and micro- economics. Even if you don't wish to use fundamental analysis when you trade, you will need a very solid foundation of understanding economics and give you a broader view of the world and it's markets.

- Read everything you can on business management and administration. Managing a hedge fund or any trading business is not only about being a good trader, its about being a good business man as well.

- Go back and finish high school, this will show potential investors that you can finish one thing before moving on to another and have the discipline to finish. You have already given yourself a big disadvantage by dropping out of high school, not sure why you would do that. It will also open more doors for you in the future. Perhaps you want to take a course one day and a prerequisite might be a high school diploma? Also you must always consider that you may not succeed, and a prudent investor, trader, or business man will always have a back up plan. I am not saying that no one has ever done it without high school, but it certainly is the harder way.

- Diversify your portfolio. If you trade purely FX instruments now, start trading commodities, or CFD's, and indices. Open a small penny stock portfolio and buy a few companies out there for dividends or just to see how the market moves in those areas. Look at futures, options, and other ways of trading and explore them. Diversification is very critical when you begin to handle larger and larger amounts of money.

I could go on, but you have a long long road ahead of you mate. Don't forget that while your friends are going to university and becoming lawyers and picking up their degrees in a few years, you probably will still be struggling still to perfect your system, learn the markets, and make real money. It takes a long time to be truly successful as an individual entity, and many more years after that to really start managing other people's money with any degree of success.

Good luck

1. As said by Davit, Trade only real money but start with as low as possible. Move step by step.
2. From my experience forget all those things about indicators. Concentrate on Price Action. Use TA such as Trend lines and Major S/R levels.
3. You could also use Moving averages (One is enough) to help you better understand trend.
4. Learn, Learn & Learn from past experience. Keep trading journal, review it each day/week/month.
5. Keep it simple but don't think its easy. It will take more than 1 or 2 years in this business to find the right path. For me it took more than 5 years.
6. If you found a real pro trader learn from him as much as possible but keep in mind that Being successful in Trading is personal.
7. You will face lots of issues in Psychological matters. Face them and try to correct them and benefit from them.
8. Most important: Have another income vehicle beside trading. You will be surprised how much it is worth of it even if you get to the 5% profitable traders stage.

Its a very long journey BUT IF your in real love with it you will eventually succeed.
Regards,

Hi Tok,
Well done with all your effort and hard work !
If u keep putting in the hours I hope u become
successful in the future.
One small change I would make is to be the
best that YOU can be. Don't worry about other
people. With billions of people on the planet
its a big ask to be the BEST !
Some good books to make sure all ur time and
effort is not wasted:
Executive toughness by Jason Selk (cheesy name, but usefull),
Chimp paradox by Dr Steven Peters
Golf Flow by Gio Valiante ( I have never played golf but found it helpful).
If I were you I would still work for an Investment Bank first and get paid whilst
learning. Then u can build a reputation and then open Hedge Fund !

Thank you all four of you for your excellent replies! I will immediately make notes of all of your recommendations, and look at seeing if I can find those books you have described.

Just one word "discipline" , try demo first demo and real are similar.

You already have studied marks book , take the example of dog bite .

the most important advice (and really the only one you should follow at the moment) was to go back to school and get an education. the rest can come later.

This probably isn't the best forum to ask these questions, I think you would get more qualified replies on EliteTrader

Basically no large investors will go near your hedge fund if they see you can't even finish high school, they usually require some formal credentials of a fund manager regardless of performance. If I was investing my companies money in an unqualified dropout I would be fired.

Go back and finish school, after high school at the very least do some kind of business management course before you even think of running a fund. If you haven't learned how to run a business you will fail even with good trading results.

I know you are keen and impatient to get started but you are taking way too many shortcuts, if you don't slow down and take the right steps now you are going to really regret it later.

Spend less time in front of charts and more time reading and learning how the financial world really works, you are focusing too closely on one tiny piece of a very large puzzle. Getting a proper education will force you to take a step back and evaluate the big picture. Right now finishing school is really the only option immediately in front of you that leads you anywhere near your goals. The path you are choosing simply doesn't lead you to where you want to be.

This guy has some excellent information about getting started in fund management:
http://richard-wilson.blogspot.com.au/
I strongly suggest you contact Richard through that site, explain your situation to him and ask for advice.

From what I have read, I was under the impression that in this profession, people only care about performance and results. Education is irrelevant.

At least, as I said, that was what I gathered from reading.

Thank you for your response.

I have emailed Richard, and am now in the process of creating a thread on EliteTrader.

Thank You for your help.

1. You have become obsessed with trading, probably because you believe that it is easy and the rewards are huge. The reality is that only a few people make money from trading. Hedge funds go broke every day, often they are multi -billion dollar funds supposedly managed by some of the worlds best and brightest! Do some studies to confirm this before you dedicate your life to a wild goose chase. Despite many attempts to emulate him there is only one Warren Buffet. An abundance of research proves that 80% of fund managers fail to beat the simple broad market indices like the SP500 annually, and none of them do it consistently. They too are supposedly amongst the world's best and brightest! Most hedge funds fare worse than this and customers are becoming tired of paying extravagant fees (2% admin fee and 20% of profits) for underperformance. The point is that what you are trying to do is very difficult to succeed in.

2. Go back to school and while doing so find out what legal requirements you have to meet in Australia to set up your own hedge fund. Then set about complying with those requirements whether they be educational or financial e.g. you may need to register with an institution. Please be aware that govts. have provided consumers with protection against unregistered financial advisors.

3. It is absolutely essential to have an income that is not related to your trading. This is because it will take the pressure off your trading decisions. Trading to put bread on the table is one of the most stressful experiences one can ever have. If you have a bad month or two or three, you starve!

4. You say that your strength is in TA. You are probably looking at charts in hindsight for patterns. Things are very different in real time! There is no method that has ever been discovered that can predict future price movements. TA has been a failure from the outset and it is highly subjective ( we each see what we want to see in a chart). There has been a lot of research done on the financial markets over the last 100 years. Some interesting studies were done in the 1960s in the USA at the time when basic computers were becoming available. TA has been discredited as being of any value in predicting future prices. One of my favourite researchers is Prof. Robert Levy, in this regard. See if you can get some of his research papers.

5. FA is no better than TA at predicting future prices. It makes interesting reading sometimes, that is about all. The world is an extraordinarily complicated place and there are millions of investors/traders. It is arrogant for anyone to believe that they have uncovered some news that nobody else knows about and that will definitely have an impact on prices. I often believe that big institutions are in cahoots with the media and release news items so that they can offload or acquire assets to the patsies (er..public).

6. OK this post has been very negative so far, I make no apologies for it is reality. So what should you do? Here is my suggestion:

6.1 Decide which market(s) you are interested in (forex, equities, bonds etc.)
6.2 For each market type decide who dominates the market i.e. who has the power to price the assets in that market. For example, the forex market is dominated by a few large players so is the index futures market but the small cap stocks market does not have a few dominant players but has a lot of small investors. Your investment strategy will not be the same for these markets.
6.3 You will need to focus on what moves the prices in a market. In an institution-dominated market it is the big guys accumulating or distributing positions that moves the prices. In the small caps market it is likely to be insiders placing buy or sell orders that move prices. You should spend your efforts in finding ways to follow these price leaders and forget about trying to forecast prices using TA and FA. Price is NOT a good predictor of future prices, it is merely the result of past actions by buyers and sellers and is historical. Even if a deal was done just one second ago it cannot tell you what the price will be one minute from now! Try take any candlestick chart and forecast where the next candlestick will close! Good luck.

In conclusion, unless you can prove yourself to be successful nobody will entrust money to you. I have indicated that following conventional methods will not give your business a competitive edge. You have to beat the current batch of pros to draw attention to yourself. IT is not going to be easy but it can be done if you think differently to the masses and use different methods. Remember to check out the legal requirements you need to comply with and get back to school ASAP as you will need an extra income in those start-up years.

Thank you for your post.

Your name seems very familiar to me. I think I just read a thread where you were in an argument with someone else. And I think it was a thread about TA (irrelevant statement) .


Anyway, I highly disagree regarding your opinion on technical analysis.

However, your post does pose many excellent questions that one must answer. Thank you for sharing these with me.

To start with, KEEP IT SIMPLE for now. You seem to be trying to go so many directions rather than just focusing on one at a time. In my opinion, focus only on your trading because if you can't become a consistently profitable trader, all the other information will be useless. I know you're confident you'll get there but I'm afraid if you're spread all over you'll miss the most important thing. Investors want PROFIT. I'm not going to say you shouldn't finish highschool but I'll disagree with those that say you won't get investors if you didn't finish school. How many people care that Bill Gates dropped out of college? If you show you can make $$$$$, you won't have to beg to get investors.
As for FA, why bother if you can make profits without it. Some of the best traders I know pay almost no attention to news. Just be aware of when it happens so you don't get hit with it. The charts are showing the fundamentals. Why try to "guess" how they'll react to the news.

Good luck!

Top quality advice right here And you can still pursue trading on free time while finishing your education.

You are free to disagree with my comments on TA which I gained from 20 years experience trying to use it. I also did a lot of research on the method for a post grad paper. I take no offence from your difference of opinion. If TA works for you in real time then you must continue to use it.

As for my other comments - you are welcome

Good luck

Thank you everyone for your posts. I greatly appreciate it.


I think the best course of action now, judging from the replies I have received, is to go to uni, start a relevant bachelor's degree (business, finance, ect), and trade on the side, whilst building a portfolio of live statements for potential investors.

Would you agree?

Absolutely.