About to graduate college. What should I do?
- Thread starter Mike10
- Start date
Honestly, accounting is one of the few college degrees that is employable. I believe that if you were smart, you would consider applying for any reasonable job to support yourself, and if interested in trading, practice or work on that on the side. You can always trade/sim/paper trade international markets after work.
20K would just basically make you more dangerous to yourself.
Watch out for the "go for it" crowd here. There are a lot of anonymous paper traders who could care less whether you go into bankruptcy. While they themselves have not yet really gone for it.
lol. I would pimp my wife if I have one (in the context of this thread, of course).
I was under the impression you had to work for a CPA via years of work experience, in addition to other things. It certainly is a good thing to aim for, but you need to get work first. If you follow the advice of a lot of these rah-rah blow your wad now on trading ETers, you may have major debts, and then have to try to compete for accounting jobs a year or two from now, with a large gap on your resume that will make you less competitive.
As I said in the post, you can learn trading on the side. There is a word for people who try to learn trading while living off their savings account. It is called "scared money."
I recommend you go to CareerBuilder.com and punch in accounting in the Key Words. Be flexible about location. Try and get some work first, and you can direct towards CPA and trading at the same time. Just manage your time and become informed about what makes sense.
Watch the wind in the willows. Willows and willow trees get by by going with the wind. But they do not go anywhere after all.
On page 173 of "24 Essential Lessons for Investment Success" is a one page story of a young person who started out with 500 dollars.
This person's story is about garnering exactly how the stock market really worked.
You read how, at 30, he founded the first company that created a computerized stock-market data base.
Later, he launched a publication that contained this contemporary critical data that people use to make smarter investment decisions.
You are "spending" the rest of this year to graduate. (2010).
If a person were to advise you correctly and specifically, he would give you the facts on how to duplicate the story of the person mentioned on page 173 but in contemporary terms.
Sunlight influences the trader.
Mostly everyone who graduates with a goal of making money in markets, starts out having a job to supply capital to their trading account.
I know I did.
So locate in the westernmost time zones of the US and work a day job. This gives you the real time data for several hours of each day before you go to work.
Second, in the evening plan you trades for stocks (position trading) by spending 15 to 20 minutes each evening.
Expert traders all know how long to hold position trades in stocks and they also know how long an intraday hold is for making profit segments in real time.
The roadmap for beginning is a plan. Use two Excel spreadsheets: one for position trading and another for intraday trading. Now you have a PnL for two types of trading that can be done when you are not on the job.
To carry out the plan, you need a strategy for each type of trading. Write up your position trading strategy. Write up your intraday trading strategy.
Lastly, you need to log your trading activity. As in the story above, you start small since you are learning as you go.
As you see in the specific reference above, the story suggests 26 months were spent to increase the initial capital 20 fold. Then he purchased a seat on the NYSE and opened his own investment and management company.
The method he used is in one of his books. It is about position trading stocks. Read the book and pay particular attention to the chapter at the end entitled "18 common mistakes .....". The book is "How to Make Money in Stocks". There, CANSLIM is presented.
Trading commodities intraday is even simpler and makes much more money as time passes. In the first 60 days of trading, only do 2 tradesa day. Gradually add another trade. Work up to four trades over 60 days. This could be as many as 204 trades in 60 days. Just trade profit segments as they come along. No more, no less.
Mark on your Excels the time when you salary equals your costs of trading. It is a milestone called "freedom".
As you read this, and from your comments, are are sitting in a place where you know nothing and "want" to do something you know nothing about. We know this because you are thanking people for what they say to you. Don't stay in this "willowy" place any longer than necessary. All you have done is thank other willows for what they know about "blowing in the wind".
should have thought about "what job can i get" BEFORE you went to college