How did you find this mentor? And is he taking any more students? 
College student who wants to trade professionally
- Thread starter ebagel
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Quote from cmb:
Its pretty much why I stay in school...I dont really want to be sitting in class listening to some teacher run his mouth. But it really does take the pressure off of learning to trade. I don't feel like I have to take a trade every day, and I can keep my size small enough that im not eating my nails when my stop buy gets triggered. When I'm done with school I should have no debt and maybe even a nice chunk of cash. I don't see the point of putting that much pressure on ones self, especially if your only bankroll is 5-10k.
I have experience in going all in too, I opted out of university directly out of highschool to travel and play poker., while I managed to carve out a backpackers salary playing poker, I knew I couldnt live in south american youth hostels forever and I always failed at moving up to the higher buy ins in the poker world. I enjoyed life on the road, and my 800-1500 a month poker winnings, after 3 years in hostels and month to month rentals all over the world, I decided its best to come back and get a degree.
Now I'm about a year into trading, with 8 months spent on a demo (could not do that without being a student and living with no pressure), hopefully when I finish my degree I will be good enough to continue trading, if not..I can say I did give it a shot going mostly full time, and I will have a degree to do something with.
My life experience, hope it helps someone
You have the OP some great advice. I hope he takes it.
In short: Don't be a fool. Stay in school.
Thinking of trading while in college... sign up for the CME trading challenge. It is on their site. I am getting a group together at my school. I figure at the least it will give me a couple months of good data and an expensive platform (CQG Integrated Client) to try out for free.
The details are here: http://www.cmegroup.com/education/trading_challenge/
You only can trade certain products I believe, but still pretty neat considering there are cash prizes for the top 3 or 4 teams as well. I believe they offer internships to some of the top teams, but I am not sure on those details.
The details are here: http://www.cmegroup.com/education/trading_challenge/
You only can trade certain products I believe, but still pretty neat considering there are cash prizes for the top 3 or 4 teams as well. I believe they offer internships to some of the top teams, but I am not sure on those details.
Parents will probably hate this post. I disagree with the people saying stay in school. If you're smart enough and passionate enough about something you might as well go for it. You can always go back to school later on. I wish I started trading sooner instead of going to college. That said, most traders fail.
I will say this:
There is no way anybody with as much intellectual property as I have acquired through self-exploration, experimentation and collaboration could have ever got that through any means but rigorous maths, financial acumen or working with the smartest people in the world.
Lasting in trading inasmuch as it leads from turn to turn and just being right most or enough of the time will never be attained without applying the very fringe of what is known and using it to one's own advantage without massive investments in your own human capital especially through education. I will never tell anybody they're dumb more than inexperienced and unknowledgable just because it's not meant to be insulting but there are concepts especially in statistical analysis and finance that will simply never be learned any other way than through such rigorous lecture, namely mathematics, quantitative rigor mixed with current, cutting edge statistical analysis like genetic algorithms and what I call Financial Science. What's predominantly missing from every op's life path just like this one's is the power to accumulate requisite knowledge and then and only then try to beat the markets. Once the value of computational and numerical analysis comes full circle that's the point where you decide on continuing in trading. Not before and not after. Only then!
What makes traders fail is faulty planning and this doesn't describe a single profitable methodology so to have to hear how he should quit school to trade is just preposterous. It'll never be a perfect model but when the numbers sum past 10 or 11 figures over at least three years of analysis you're probably doing something right in how you approach trading and the op has neglected the hard maths for idle philosophical political underpinnings that will not help him other than to be familiar with the same rhetorical nonsense already known through debate and argumentative politico specialization so the best advice is really abandon politics for math and computer science computational courses as that's really where nearly all of my specialization happened along with other econometric and empirical analysis that cannot substitute for not knowing what constitutes a basis from opinion and this whole thread is opinion. Math and computer science are required now for trading, so getting used to that crowd would be way more useful than putzing around studying political theory and even though comparative economic systems never said so at some point capitalism becomes cooperative investing as determined by the highest mutually beneficial opportunity available in the region of choice by each worker where the one who works anywhere works everywhere as much as he possibly can and that automation is the single most important philosophy to have in this age in trading. Period!
There is no way anybody with as much intellectual property as I have acquired through self-exploration, experimentation and collaboration could have ever got that through any means but rigorous maths, financial acumen or working with the smartest people in the world.
Lasting in trading inasmuch as it leads from turn to turn and just being right most or enough of the time will never be attained without applying the very fringe of what is known and using it to one's own advantage without massive investments in your own human capital especially through education. I will never tell anybody they're dumb more than inexperienced and unknowledgable just because it's not meant to be insulting but there are concepts especially in statistical analysis and finance that will simply never be learned any other way than through such rigorous lecture, namely mathematics, quantitative rigor mixed with current, cutting edge statistical analysis like genetic algorithms and what I call Financial Science. What's predominantly missing from every op's life path just like this one's is the power to accumulate requisite knowledge and then and only then try to beat the markets. Once the value of computational and numerical analysis comes full circle that's the point where you decide on continuing in trading. Not before and not after. Only then!
What makes traders fail is faulty planning and this doesn't describe a single profitable methodology so to have to hear how he should quit school to trade is just preposterous. It'll never be a perfect model but when the numbers sum past 10 or 11 figures over at least three years of analysis you're probably doing something right in how you approach trading and the op has neglected the hard maths for idle philosophical political underpinnings that will not help him other than to be familiar with the same rhetorical nonsense already known through debate and argumentative politico specialization so the best advice is really abandon politics for math and computer science computational courses as that's really where nearly all of my specialization happened along with other econometric and empirical analysis that cannot substitute for not knowing what constitutes a basis from opinion and this whole thread is opinion. Math and computer science are required now for trading, so getting used to that crowd would be way more useful than putzing around studying political theory and even though comparative economic systems never said so at some point capitalism becomes cooperative investing as determined by the highest mutually beneficial opportunity available in the region of choice by each worker where the one who works anywhere works everywhere as much as he possibly can and that automation is the single most important philosophy to have in this age in trading. Period!
I traded during college way back and traders today while in college have much more access to resources than I had back in the day.
1) Trade full time in the summer only when your university is on its summer break.
2) Consider transferring to a university that has resources for traders: classes in trading, professors more in tune to trading, trader study groups, trading rooms with all the equipment you'll typically see at any institution trading firm, better networking with firms as an intern and such.
The above is at many of the top universities in the U.S. and abroad. There's an in-depth thread here at ET on that specific topic that contains a list of these top universities. I don't remember the link but you can easily find it via ET search @ http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s=
3) Consider extending your college from 4 years to 6 years via reducing your academic load that also allows you to trade more during school. Thus, lower your number of classes (credit) per semester/quarter or go part-time for awhile.
Current job market for those with your degree study isn't too good. Thus, you may want to extend your college duration until things are better in the job market just in case trading doesn't work out for you.
4) Arrange your classes (if possible) so that you have 1 - 2 days free of classes that allows you to trade full-time or part-time on those particular days.
5) If your academic GPA suffers or declines...stop trading and give your academics 100% again (no trading) until you GPA goes back up. Nothing unusual here if you've ever been heavily involved in sports while in college. Its a time management thing that some student/athletes can do well while most can not.
With that said, I don't know how much money your making from trading and you didn't mention any other aspects of your trading but if your profits are less than having a part-time job during school or less than a full-time summer job...enjoy the beer money and extra cash to do fun things with your friends.
Yet, if you're making some serious money like using it to pay for your college education, buy a car, pay for a condo near campus or making more money than your parents...trading as a business...you really need to re-arrange your academic schedule to make it more suitable to trading as I've recommended above because that was the situation for me when I was trading in college.