don't be a trader
be productive with your life
be a nurse
make a difference
have a legacy on your gravestone
be productive with your life
be a nurse
make a difference
have a legacy on your gravestone
College Students and Other Future Traders
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Good plan. Just understand that paper trading is not very indicative of real trading. For so many reasons.
When you do have the 2k, or whatever you think you can start with, and can afford to lose it and still provide for yourself, that is the time to step up and learn to trade by doing it.
Best thing to do is to try and find a "mentor" to work with. Going to a prop firm is probably the best way to get started. You get some training, some leverage, and generally someone (or a lot of people) looking over your shoulder (in the name of "risk management"), which is a good thing. Helps with discipline, and it helps with accountability.
Peace,
RSHi RS,
I fully agree with you in the rest of your statements but I don't think it's a wise idea to publish one's system. If everybody would trade the same system it won't work anymore. On the other hand it isn't a good idea to ask for a system because you really believe in it only if you developed it yourself. And doubting your system (or style, whatever you call it) is one of the biggest problems in trading.
I think it is necessary to make the errors (of course you have to know about them to recognize them). You can only learn to cope with the feelings that you get during trading if you have them. If you read in a book about the trader's block you don't know what it is unless you had one.
André Kostolany (a speculator who was quite popular in Germany) once said: "Only who was broke twice has the right to call himself a speculator" - he was broke twice. I'm still reluctant about getting broke although I know what he meant. But I made any other mistake I read or heard about and I've the feeling that I'm not finished with it.
That's assuming that you have 100 K in the bank to pay for college.
College wasn't a waste of time for me. I went a well respected public school, made my connections, and it only cost me 40k. One of my teachers was a former 1,000,000 Wall St. trader that was very helpful. Just to prove that you don't need to go to MIT to have good teachers, this guy knows Merton, Derman, Rubinstein, Merriwether, all the big hittters. They use to email him with job offers for his students. That alone was priceless. Then you throw in the mentoring, strategizing my trading with him, and insight I got into Wall St, and I couldn't begin to put a price on it.
I took classes on the commodity markets where I learned fundamental and technical analysis.
College is what you make of it. Every school has somebody who can change your life. But it's up to you to find them. Not everyone is cut out for it. And not everyone is willing to turn over the stones needed to find the right people in college.
Not eveyone has 100K in the bank to use as a trading account if they don't go. College is an insurance policy on life. If trading doesn't work out, I can always go get a more traditional job to pay the bills.
be a trader
have a gravestone as big as the cemetary itself
my 2 cents
I graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in accounting and I still don't know how to write a complete sentence.
Statistics (which traders generally believe in) will show that a college degree has a dollar value if money is how you choose to judge the worth of something. Doctors and dentists (and lawyers, etc.) have to do more than just get a college degree.
College graduates just have more options available to them. And of course, the statistics I referred to can prove that college graduates, on the whole, earn more money than those who do not go to college (or finish).
This is not to say that college is right for everyone. And it certainly is a fact that there are many very successful people who never went to college. Many that did not even finish high school. But the chances are just better for college grads.
However, putting aside the earning potential of college graduates as opposed to non college people, saying that a diploma is a "piece of useless paper" is certainly a matter of opinion. And you are entitled to yours.
But the fact remains that no one was ever set back in life in general terms because they had that diploma. But certainly NOT having a college degree can be a handicap.
Again, earnings, and potential earnings are not the only factors involved in evaluating the worth of a college education.
There are so many aspects of what those extra years of education contribute to one's life. It really isn't measurable in a completely objective way. There is more to life than just financial success.
While it may sound snobbish to say that college graduates fit into society on a different level than non graduates, it remains a reality. Just the fact that going to college in the majority of cases brings students into contact with a diverse mix of people can be a big advantage. In (public) high school, for the most part, you know people who, because they live in the same neighborhood, are generally going to have much in common, and bring very little diversity into your life. On the other hand, most colleges are attended by a widely diverse student body. This diversity alone contributes an element of social sophistication to those who attend college.
In most cases, university students are forced by circumstances to make the adjustment required to be self motivated. In high school, most of us have the pressure put on us by our parents to meet our scholastic responsibilities. In college, there is no one there to provide the motivation but ourselves. This forces the majority of college freshman to grow up quickly. This is just one example of what makes the college experience very different than high school.
While I fully agree that as professional traders, the value of an academic background can sometimes (certainly not always) be basically worthless, there is no way I can go along with the contention that college diploma is a "$100k piece of worthless paper".
Certainly there is much more to life than trading. And more to life than earning potential.
Being "well rounded", while a quality that is really impossible to quantify is still a real issue. And for those who have the privilege and the opportunity to go to college, there are certainly more than a few benefits to be gained by a college education.
There absolutely are other ways to acquire virtually all the knowledge obtainable by going to college. But the experience is more than just the knowledge.
There is no way that NOT going to college will hold back a person from being successful and happy. I would never make that argument. I just believe that saying that a college degree is "worthless" is flat out wrong. Often a college degree may seem worthless for a time, but I have never heard of anyone who went to college and really believed that. At least not in the long run.
Of course, there are many scenarios I can think of where it may seem to someone that they feel they wasted their time right after finishing school. They can't find a job. They have friends that built up successful lives working those four years while the college grad comes out of school with nothing but a "piece of paper". But as the years go by, that feeling of having made the wrong choice will ALWAYS go away.
And right or wrong, there is generally a degree of social acceptance (or nonacceptance) of college grads vs. non college grads. Life is not always just. But that is the way it works.
As far as my own feelings, I am sometimes saddened that some people will reject others based on their degree of education. Some people just don't want to go to college, and some people aren't cut out for it. And some people just don't get the opportunity to go even if they want to. Sometimes it just isn't financially feasible. Which is a shame. But life is not always fair.
Which leads to a final point. You say it is better to take the 100k and use it to learn to trade. I do not know of many high school graduates that have access to that kind of money. Getting money for college, while difficult, or even impossible for many (especially THAT kind of money....as someone else pointed out, there are less expensive ways to go to college), it is at least possible in many cases to borrow money for an education. But borrowing for trading (or any other business) is virtually impossible for an unemployed 18 year old high school graduate.
Of course, if you happen to have a family that can and will just hand over $100k to with which you can attempt to learn how to trade, and assuming they are smart enough to know that the first $100k won't go very far with an inexperienced trader (trading tuition), then yeah, as far as money goes, you are probably in VERY good financial shape due to being lucky in the gene lottery. So you would be financially set without college. But the other side of this scenario is that if you have a rich family, and the need to earn money is not pressing, then that would seem to me to be even more reason to spend the time in college. If you don't need the income, what better way to spend that four years?
After all the other factors, the truth is, for those who can afford it, college is just plain FUN!! The perfect place to spend the years in which you are too young to be taken seriously in the business world (in most cases), and too old to be living with your parents. And living on your own at that age and surviving with an allowance really is not a lifestyle in most cases that contributes to one's growth. (IMO).
Peace,
RSThere was a point in my life that I wrestled with this issue. I thought by being a trader that I was contributing nothing to society. I was not creating anything. Not employing anyone. Not offering a service, etc.
My wife was a teacher. I went to work as a prop trader right after she died. My son was 10 years old at the time, and it was a very strange point in my life. I was feeling a bit ashamed or guilty that I was working just a few hours a day and making more money than my wife ever did. And she was helping learning disabled kids and "making a difference".
I went and talked to a shrink about it.
She pointed out to me that the most important thing in my life was to provide for myself and especially for my son.
I haven't given that matter any thought since that day. While it is true that I still can't make a "difference" in the world through my work, I can appease myself by making charitable contributions. Just like anyone.
Peace,
RS
I was replying to a person who leave a trend too early, i. e. , when the trend is moving along normally. He is "fixing" his entry by leaving too early. His entry wasn't in need of a fix. I suggest that you know and understand the sequence of event your indicators and their sgnals provide. Only think of leaving when the sequence shows you a Flaw. The flaw indicates the trend is busted so then exit or revrse.
Not a comment on "hedging".