Advice to a beginner

Originally posted by vulture
Everyone ante up as to which one of the new guys is Aphie...

I was just thinking the same thing...even before I made it halfway through the post. LOL.
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil


Don't listen to anyone on here. Clear your mind of all preconceived notions of market movements. Prepare to get punched in the face, grabbed by the balls and thrown around. Learn from your mistakes -- try not to repeat the same stupid thing over and over.

Don't open up 3 option positions with 1 daytrade remaining on IB, only to close one position and have 2 left open and getting a warning that you are non "allowed" to close the other two.

You will find out that any mistake you can make you will make -- and some mistakes will cost far more than others.

I am currently lurking ET occasionally and concentrating solely on my own trading.

I will say this much -- throw out everything you've been told so far about the market from every source you know and go in there and figure it out for yourself.

You will see how market makers jerk stupid people around (like me a few times). You will see how little things, like leaving a limit buy or stop order for an option on a fast moving market will generally give you bad fills.

Sooner or later, after enough pain and observation, you will start to notice the dynamics. Then, just when you think you are starting to get a feel for all this nonsense, you will get ass-reamed in some new fashion that you never thought possible.

Today I watched as a $500 profit on a MSFT PUT got vaporized because I could not close out my position. This was after making $75 on a Citibank option trade. This was, at one point, my best day ever -- until I was unable to close positions.

See, this is the kind of bullshit you will soon learn about and I can assure you ... when you watch a $500 profit turn into a loss because you CANNOT close the position, you can only help but to just say f*** it, close up for the day and go do other things.

Most importantly, don't let anyone on this board fill your head up with BS saying you can't do it.

You *WILL* lose money at the beginning. I can positively assure you on this. Just keep that in mind and take it all in as a learning experience.

Hopefully MSFT goes down over the next 23 days, as I have a debit spread open with 1 LONG MSFT $55 PUT, 1 SHORT MSFT $47.50 PUT and 1 SHORT $42.50 MSFT PUT.

Oh and last but not least -- trade what you see, no matter how unbelievable it seems.

I see you are now giving advice to beginners...like the markets, I guess your self imposed week or two hiatus from posting here in the forum was something you couldn't control either:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9897&perpage=6&pagenumber=49

10-21-02 09:44 PM
This is Jasper
I will be back soon, but I need to stay away from ET for a week or two and clear my mind of a lot of the negativity that I see going through this board. There are a lot of great people who give great support, but just as many selfish assholes who really don't care about anyone else but themselves.

Here is the current screenshot of Jasper. I'm going to work on it for the next week while paper-trading and injecting another $1k into my account.

I'll be around for those who want updates on Jasper, etc -- just PM me or e-mail me.

Thanks for all your support. I'm taking a little vacation from ET.


Man, you are so full of it.

YOU, call others selfish assholes?

You think you are in a position to be giving advice to a new person?

You are as narcisissistic as they come.
 
Originally posted by OPTIONAL777
Man, you are so full of it.

YOU, call others selfish assholes?

You think you are in a position to be giving advice to a new person?

You are as narcisissistic as they come.
[/B]

If there is one thing I have quickly learned by practicing to control my emotions in the market, it is to ignore the stupid comments made by people like you.

My natural reaction is to get angry but then I have to stop and tell myself that I can't control stupid people -- I can only ignore them.

Everything I said is sound advice -- if there is something you disagree with then you can reply to that. Otherwise, you're just making a personal attack on me and that's just something I should laugh over and not get angry about.
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil


If there is one thing I have quickly learned by practicing to control my emotions in the market, it is to ignore the stupid comments made by people like you.

My natural reaction is to get angry but then I have to stop and tell myself that I can't control stupid people -- I can only ignore them.

Everything I said is sound advice -- if there is something you disagree with then you can reply to that. Otherwise, you're just making a personal attack on me and that's just something I should laugh over and not get angry about.


This, Little Aphie; is the smartest thing you've ever said.......
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil


If there is one thing I have quickly learned by practicing to control my emotions in the market, it is to ignore the stupid comments made by people like you.

My natural reaction is to get angry but then I have to stop and tell myself that I can't control stupid people -- I can only ignore them.

Everything I said is sound advice -- if there is something you disagree with then you can reply to that. Otherwise, you're just making a personal attack on me and that's just something I should laugh over and not get angry about.

That is your problem, isn't it? You can't control your emotions. You can't control you anger, you can't control your overposting, you can't control your fear and your greed, you can't control your need for attention.

You indulge in your emotions the way an addict indulges in his drug of choice.

You have no discipline.

Without discipline, you will fail as a trader.

Stay away for a while and work on yourself, and stop trying to give advice to others. You need to look inside for a long time and find out what is wrong. Find your wound, and heal it.

You need recovery man, not trading.
 
Originally posted by NoviceTrader

Recent Background information. I am a 24 year old recent college drop out. I will probably finish my degree. I have always been incredibly interested in the financial markets. After losing about $4,000 or 2/3 of my investments during the correction, and after a summer internship with a financial company in Kansas. I became very disenchanted in the financial services industry.

I don't want to use my name to solicit someone's business then have them lose half their money and be upset with me. I also realized that good financial planners are worth their weight in platinum. However, thats another story.

After losing most my money, I was shocked and upset. But I wasn't mad at the market I was mad at myself. It disturbed me that most of my professors didn't really know anything about the financial markets. All of their knowledge was academic. None of them could teach me how to make money.

Fortunately I had an Uncle that I knew was vaguely involved in the markets. As it turned out he was a Momentum trader. He's been willing to take me under his wing and teach me quite a bit about his system. This week I begin paper trading e-mini's using trade station 6. I'm very excited. I don't have a lot of money. In fact right now I'm basically broke. I'm planning on just practicing the system for a few months before I think about opening an account.

My Uncle reccomended Terra Nova to me but I don't meet their financial requirements. Right now I am looking at Interactive Brokers and Cannon trading company. Some things I've read about IB concern me. If anyone wants to follow me on my journey in hope of becoming a successful trader. Or if you have advice for a novice I'd love to hear from you. I'm trying to make my simulation as real as possible. The four factors I'm considering in a Broker are..... 1. Speed, speed, speed 2. reliability 3. Speed and quality of customer support.4. Low account requirements.

Because my knowledge of trading is completely academic at this point. I would love any advice from more experienced traders. This really is my dream job. Thanks and good luck to everyone.


A couple of points:
(1) If you can finish your degree do it: its a lot easier now than later and will help you down the road. If you cant do so and you are very committed to being a successful trader you can succeed but not having any type of credentials will be confining down the road .....
(2) Undercapitalization will prevent you from being successful. If you have no capital you need to get in with a firm that will let you trade their dollars and train you ...
(3) Academics are likely to be of little help with trading or with developing useful and profitable mathematical tools or techniques. There are however some basic ideas that you should know and they can teach these but useful financial engineering techniques are rarely taught correctly or from a valuable perspective.
 
Novicetrader,

I think you should seriously consider finishing off your studies before you go any further. An education will broaden your outlook on life and provide you with more options.

I credit much of my success as a trader to the research skills I acquired whilst undertaking my BSc, MPHil and PhD studies in occupational psychology, at a leading research university here in England. These multiple degrees contained no financial information, but the research methodology and statistics element are in many ways central to my current trading approach. A further personal benefit is that that if I was uneducated it would be unlikely in my opinion, that I would be able to assimilate as much of the trading literature, and certainly not with a "critical eye". So obviously an education can assist immensely in both trading and non-trading areas of your life, if undertaken at a sufficiently high level. A lack of education wont stop you being a trader, but wouldnt you rather have a fertile, trained mind as opposed to am untrained one?






Andrew
 
Originally posted by volvo264
A lack of education wont stop you being a trader, but wouldnt you rather have a fertile, trained mind as opposed to am untrained one ?
Andrew

... Before I went to grad school I did think along these lines. Unfortunately, after studying at some of the worlds premier universities and with some very famous researchers my conclusion is that many - but not all - of these people had no special skills. Many of them were not inventive or insightful researchers and a lot of them had poor moral character. Some were indeed very talented and creative people: the majority were not.

In my opinion you can develop a fertile and trained mind with some basic training and continued hard work: IMHO obtaining a PhD is not a necessary requirement for developing critical and creative thinking. In fact I believe that many researchers are biased: they do indeed have trained minds and thus they have a difficult time seeing the broader picture of connections outside of their core studies......
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil
Don't listen to anyone on here.

Particularly, aphexcoil a/k/a "aphie."

Aphster, taking a break from that stressful experience know as "ET?" Sheeesh! What did you last 12 hours?
 
Back
Top