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BSAM, Hehe, your analogy is exaggerated so I had to as well. Assuming mlbeers is a kid with a "wad" saved up, telling him to venture out now is more like giving him a bike. How much is a "wad" for a kid? $2k? $10k? Would you rather telling him to venture out later, when he had a decade...

Lamont, You seem to think a new trader can become a full-fledged systems trader right out of the gate by paper trading properly. I don't think most of us work that way, but perhaps you have a valid point. Care to elaborate what do you mean by proper paper trading? How does a new trader...

I agree with Jayford that mlbeers needs to trade (small) real money now. There are some critical questions that need to be answered that cannot be shown by paper trading: - What's my risk tolerance? - Am I better as a discretionary trader or systems trader? - Am I a gambler? Anyway it's...

The issue has been resolved. Took a little convincing, but MBT did go after Penson and got my money back. It was an issue with Penson switching their money market fund (for cash position), and somehow the sweeps were not coordinated right when they had two funds hooked up. Hopefully this has...

Ah, that explains it. At $75k salary, the income taxes in the US is about 20% too, payroll taxes (social security) are about 10%. Cost of living is much higher than SE Asia. So at the end of year, you're doing great if you can save up $10-20k grubstake. Hardly enough to retire on hehe.

LOL, don't forget federal/state income taxes, payroll taxes, living expenses. At that salary it takes 2-5 years just to build up a PDT grubstake. Speaking like one who never paid significant taxes eh?

A little at a time hehe. Everything looks absurd when taken to the idealistic extreme, Marx used that to "prove" Capitalism is absurd too. Not that I'm advocating anything very radical anyway, it's been tried and worked well in some cases. The U.S. did pretty well surviving the 1970s oil...

Awhile ago I start investigating how MBTrading calculates margin interest because the charges appear abnormally high. Starting from Jan 2005, my interest charges has been about 30-50 times more than what it should be based on my trading records. Interestingly in Dec 2004 the interest charge...

I consider a fixed consumption tax on oil to be price-fixing. It's price-fixing of the social cost of oil consumption (not overall price). I think it's much preferable for the social cost of oil to be market-driven, similar to carbon emissions trading. For one, the market does a better job of...

This poll is pretty useless because it doesn't specify the timeframe. How are you going to make sense of the results?

Sparohok, I agree with you that regulation is required to protect the basic rules that keep a free market fair. For one, I don't think the capital markets would be as liquid and efficient as today if there were no protection of private property, and no laws against insider trading and price...

I believe that options/futures trades all have a tangible economic effect. For example, when I buy a bunch of CALLs at the market, the options market maker may choose to hedge his risk by buying the underlying stock. He has commission advantage so he can pull off a profit because of the wide...

Just good old competition. Trader will gravitate to instruments that suit their purposes. Exchanges/instruments that don't suit the traders will just be discarded in the dust bin of history. It's highly democratic hehe, and no one can manipulate votes in this system. Futures/options...

If you don't have all your eggs in one basket you can always open an account somewhere else to hedge your ES position with some other instrument. If a catastrophe wipes out all your well-placed eggs, well we're all toast. By the way, how much potential profit are you willing to give up by...

I don't agree with a lot of you guys about what's an edge. To me, your edge is what allows you to make a profit, not things that maximizes your profit. For example, my edge is that I can predict with about 60% certainty how the market will react to certain types of news. This is what gives...

I found a way to turn lead into gold, but have no money to buy lead. Perhaps you can invest your capital with me, we'll sell the gold for $25k and then make tons more with your system? I apologize for bumping this stupid thread ;)

Think about how successful and for how long a trader has to be profitable for you to consider her a worthy mentor. Think about how much a few thousand dollars of mentoring fee affects her income. Remember that a trader with a track record can go prop or start a hedge fund easily. Is it...

I highly recommend MBT but bear in mind it's very bare-bones. There's no charting, no research reports, no portfolio analysis. It's just a broker where you place your trades. Another disadvantage is that it's a small broker so it may go out of business someday. The good part is that the...

By fully experiencing the pain of leaving lots and lots of money on the table. If you have an edge and you're sabotaging yourself by exiting early, that's what happens...

Perhaps nitro was refering to Ripley's posts 2 months ago that he started with $1k capital, much of which borrowed on a credit card cash advance. Now Ripley is talking about paying $9k-$25k in commission a month (depending on which post you read). That's "relatively" fast progress on the...