Advice on how I should Raise Trading Capital?

zghorner said:
Honesty is everything as the truth is all that matters...so here is some brutal, embarrassing honesty:

Long story short...my education as a trader has cost me ~$140k...And I absolutely do not have anymore to lose. My primary choice for gambling was long options believing that "it has to happen"...but it never did and I absolutely deserved to learn that lesson. If it wasn't for options I would have still lost the same amount of money...the problem was obviously me as the driver, not the trading vehicle.

After a 6 month break to really reflect on my failures I decided to get away from options and focus on futures (for a number of reasons not relevant to this thread). I've always been intimidated/afraid of futures trading but drawn to them for whatever reason. After some success paper trading I decided to go live trading micros...actually doing the things you are supposed to do...and I am profitable.

Although this thread is slightly premature based on my skills...the time is coming and I should probably get started with raising capital sooner rather than later.

Looking for some genuine advice on what to do here. I am 37 yo male, I do not have a job and really really do not want to go back to the work place, (haven't worked since 2018). I am really fortunate in that I own a decent house and a profitable small business with zero debt...but my lifestyle has to be extremely frugal due to very low income. Too frugal in fact.

So where would you look for trading capital in this situation? I have about $25k in an IRA I could cash out, probably another $20k in physical goods I could let go of with reluctance...but that's about it.

- Job is most obvious choice, unfortunately.
- Prop firm worth it? would I have to trade their specific way? would they even be interested?
- Take out a loan? If I am profitable maybe it would be worth taking out a cash loan of some sort.

Just looking for some advice,

thanks ET.
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I wouldn't go for prop firms if I were you. Major security risk. Your money is fused with their operating funds and they are not obligated to segregate it because you are not considered a client but a member of their firm trading their money and they are not audited so they can easily take your money to fulfill whatever debt obligations that they have or simply disappear.

My advice for raising trading capital is:

Daytime job and trade small and more drastically get a financial backer but I wouldn't worry about raising capital yet at this point. What you need to focus on right now is developing a winning trading system. That's the most important otherwise you will still be losing money. Selling your house or taking out an equity loan out of your house or cashing your IRA Roth and even selling your physical goods all sound like a gambler going through his/her possessions to get his/her hands on any money he/she can find to feed his/her gambling addiction.

You need to stop the gambling mentality. Get rid of the ego and get a day job and meanwhile sit down and start working on a winning trading strategy. The job market is really tight right now. Companies are practically begging people to go work for them so you can easily find good jobs with actually good pay. Start from there and once you think you found a working strategy through backtesting then you can move on to trading first with a very small size and then gradually increase position size.
 
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zghorner said:
- Job is most obvious choice, unfortunately.
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Yeah thats the way, before the economy turns down even more.
You are lucky in that you are still quite young and can lose most of your life savings and still have time to come back. Harder to do that if you were 20 years older.

zghorner said:
the math is so much better with a larger account. I could take my (current) account balance of $6,700 to about $150k in 5 years with current stats...or $100k to over $2m.
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You might think you can make 100% a year trading Crude and Gold futures. And maybe you can if you have a good year. But doing that five years in a row is next to impossible.
 
You don't need to raise capital.

You trade 1 lot first.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 2 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 5 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 10 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 20 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 100 lots ....
 
zghorner said:
the math is so much better with a larger account. I could take my (current) account balance of $6,700 to about $150k in 5 years with current stats...or $100k to over $2m. I get that as money increases...so do the challenges, and I also know for a fact that I am being naive in the assumption that growth will be the same on $100k as $6k.

However, with the markets I am trading liquidity would not be an issue at all on that amount...I would basically just increase micro contract size organically until I reached full size contracts. It is possible.

And another thing is I am constantly getting better, I am putting the work in waking at 4:30 each day and really devoting the time to this. It's serious to me.

p.s. fu** ES lol...I just really struggle with the rhythm and avoid it. I do much better with crude and gold.
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The math is so much better the other way as well. For an account of $6700 to grow to $150K in 5 years, it can just as easily go from $6700 to zero or even worse -150K with leveraged trading. This is your problem. You can only see the rosy part of the trading but you don't see its pitfalls. This is typically gambling mentality, only seeing the windfalls but not seeing the loss of the whole house and everything. And just like with any gamblers, liquidity is never the problem, the problem is the non-existence of the money-making stratgies. At least with the financial markets, the odds of winning are much better.
 
maxinger said:
You don't need to raise capital.
You trade 1 lot first.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 2 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 5 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 10 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 20 lots.
As the account grows, increase the trading size to 100 lots ....
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I think his stats say it is going to take 3 years for him to get to 10 lots with his current capital. He wants more capital so he can start at 10 lots straight away.
 
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Fundseeder or the US Trading Competition

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Businessman said:
I think his stats say it is going to take 3 years for him to get to 10 lots with his current capital. He wants more capital so he can start at 10 lots straight away.
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ok.

That sounds like a good way to lose money rapidly.
 
Create an app biz to improve dating conversational skill/provide real time dialogue ideas-responses. Then sell it for a billion dollars to faang companies and forget about day trading.

 
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