Quote from sandy1:
Kastro and coolweb,
You 2 have taken me from lurker status to a registered user!
You two are so negative that it kills me. I know A LOT of traders that make a good living trading. And most of them are sitting at home or in prop firms. As for me, I share a small office with 3 other traders. We share the expense of a t1 line, a dsl back up, and rent. Plus it gets us out of the house (we all have children). We have all been trader for over 5 years and each have made 6 figures every year. We use AOL AIM to talk to another 6 or 7 traders that we know to give each other ideas or any breaking news. They are very profitable as well.
I came to elitetrader to get some advice on a forex broker, but find the "career trader" forum very interesting. I have read numerous posts from traders claiming that "I can count the number of profitable traders on one hand." Well, that just proves you don't know a lot of traders!
People claim that you don't have an edge sitting at home on your computer. That you can't compete with the quants with their Phd's and supercomputers and zillions of dollars. But I'm here to tell you that you do have an edge. And its the one thing that every successful trader I have ever met has. And that edge is:
DISCIPLINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is what separates the winners from the losers. The traders that make money every day versus the trader that has a career ending trade.
Trust me, no Phd can teach you discipline. There are a lot of those guys that will never make it as traders, even with a their brain power. Those guys are using computers to find the "holy grail" of trading. Good luck.
I trade about 1 million shares per month, about 50,000 per day. I trade mostly in 2500 share lots of NYSE stocks. I monitor about 150 stocks very closely using a pretty simple MACD system. I also use trade-ideas to give me ideas on other stocks (not a plug for trade-ideas, I just think its an amazing service). I keep NO positions overnight.
My key is that if a position doesn't workout right away I get out: Discipline!! I can always get back in.
"Live to play another day" is my motto.
Like I said, I find this forum very interesting and will do some follow ups. I welcome everyones comments.
Well, the question to this thread is "Are you still happy being a trader?" I can honestly say "yes"!!! I treat it as a job. Get up, get to the office, look at my charts and read briefing.com and IBD.
Anyway, enough for now. Thanks again for pulling me out of being a lurker!!
Sandy