Are you a successful at home day trader with no other source of income who began with modest means?

DHOHHI · Jan 31, 2015

xandman said:
DHOHHI

Can you share us your technical background before becoming a trader and provide Sharpe ratios for those 19 years?

Had an undergrad in Quantitative Methods (Stats etc.), Masters in Operations Research (Optimization stuff) and a 2nd MS in Management Science. Those degrees got me into the corporate world where I developed math and AI (Expert System) systems to do production planning and scheduling in automotive plants. I saw that a big corporate environment wasn't for me longer term so after saving up some $$$ I headed out to trade.

My goals early on were to make enough to cover living expenses and increase my $$$ with my trading firm. Going from memory I think after 12 years I had my account up to $500K from the $90K I started with and had met my living expenses out of that as well. I then reallocated a bunch away from the day (and short term) trading account so as to not get reckless and overtrade with too big of an account.

Early on I used TA a lot but after a couple years found I was spending way too much time each evening analyzing charts. So I ditched that and recall trading the same stocks over and over for some time (INTC, DELL, MSFT, ASND, CSCO). I still do that a lot today ... stocks I trade a lot are FLEX, ONNN, SAMN, ATML, PMCS, JBL, AMAT, GOOG, AAPL, FEYE ... the more intra-day volatility the better I like them.

marketsurfer · Jan 31, 2015

DHOHHI said:
Actually not so difficult ... I started my 1st year with enough in the bank to cover living expenses. And I knew if I blew out I could have probably found another engineering job. But I had no desire to return to the politics of the corporate world. I also was pretty good at being conscious of my spending. I probably was a bit frugal for a couple years until I knew I could spend more and be highly confident that I would make enough $$$ to meet all my needs.

Truth is you had prop shop leverage ( and guidance) when you started. Right? surf

m1nt · Jan 31, 2015

there were people in the 90's that turned less than 100k into many millions starting with at home retail accounts. I know some but don't feel like doxing them. if anyone is doing research on the subject or writing a book or something, pm me and I will provide names.

One guy traded nothing but retail accounts into millions but blew out and is now a used car salesman.

DHOHHI · Jan 31, 2015

marketsurfer said:
Truth is you had prop shop leverage ( and guidance) when you started. Right? surf

Nope. I paper traded a year prior to my leaving my job. See prior post.

Are you a successful at home day trader with no other source of income who began with modest means?

ExperiencedJoe · Jan 31, 2015

DHOHHI said:
Nope. I paper traded a year prior to my leaving my job. See prior post.

Interesting. Paper trade is as good as real trade ?

ExperiencedJoe · Jan 31, 2015

m1nt said:
there were people in the 90's that turned less than 100k into many millions starting with at home retail accounts. I know some but don't feel like doxing them. if anyone is doing research on the subject or writing a book or something, pm me and I will provide names.

Yes, practically everyone knows someone who does it. Except me, I have never come across someone who could do it himself, at least not convincingly.

If those people were making it in the 90's but not now then they might have gotten lucky in a one way market. Real skills should work in all markets and all times.

DHOHHI · Jan 31, 2015

ExperiencedJoe said:
Interesting. Paper trade is as good as real trade ?

No, not at all. You don't have real $$$ so you don't experience the emotional ups and downs when paper trading. When I moved to All Tech after 2 years I paper traded a couple weeks to get the hang of their trading platform. I found the fills were mostly really good, which may have been in part to give newer traders a bit of self confidence.

VPhantom · Jan 31, 2015

ExperiencedJoe said:
Paper trade is as good as real trade ?

Can be if you're emotionally distant from it. ...that is, once you overcome the "nah, come to think of it I wouldn't have taken that one for real" phase.

ExperiencedJoe · Jan 31, 2015

VPhantom said:
Can be if you're emotionally distant from it. ...that is, once you overcome the "nah, come to think of it I wouldn't have taken that one for real" phase.

Does the counterparty behave the same in real and paper trade then ? They have money at stake as well.

ExperiencedJoe · Jan 31, 2015

DHOHHI said:
No, not at all. You don't have real $$$ so you don't experience the emotional ups and downs when paper trading. When I moved to All Tech after 2 years I paper traded a couple weeks to get the hang of their trading platform. I found the fills were mostly really good, which may have been in part to give newer traders a bit of self confidence.

Paper trade can work for learning a broker platform. But I don't see how paper trade can reflect real trade strategy in any way because in a real trade the entity taking the other side of your trade also has money at stake. That entity is not known to give free money to people. Common belief is that 90% of people lose their money to that entity.