Engineer looking to make a career change into trading

OP -

The nice thing about trading financial markets is that it need not be the end all career. If you already have a career that earns great money trading can be a very nice bump in your yearly income, if you play right and do not expect a weekly or monthly paycheck to come of it.
You wait for your spot and take names. no need to trade daily or even once week.

Psychologically speaking a nice income makes trading easier...yes, MUCH easier. "No worries mate", get it?

Why put undue pressure on yourself? Track mkts....develop a strat....and all in your spare time with true risk capital that you can afford to lose.
 
Quote from gtizzle101:

As an engineer I figured you would have the inherent cognitive ability to make logical decisions. Since it seems you may be in a position to make a very stupid mistake, let me help you.

Do any of the three you mentioned and you are a fool. You will quickly realize after a month or so how terrible of a decision you made. So please if you want to waste your time and life on being less than shit in the hierarchy in finance then go ahead. If you want to truly get into finance, do it the proper way and get educated like you did to become an engineer.
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I agree with the point you're trying to make. But let me give you a little more background information about myself before you and the others judge:

1. Tried to get into banking and finance. Applied to Goldman, JP Morgan, etc - never heard back.

2. Tried to get into a top 10 MBA school - got rejected.

3. Tried to get into a top 10 Masters in Finance program - got rejected.

Engineering is not for me nor will it ever be. I see it right now as more of a safety net than anything else.

As for trading, I've done alot of reading and learning about it and it fits me better than what I'm doing now. I'm willing to put in the time and effort into learning and developing myself as a trader.

I should edit the first post and let people know that I have decided not to quit my day job and go into day trading but will rather learn to swing trade the daily & weekly charts.
 
Quote from gambler2075:

I have found this quote from ChartAddict to ring especially true... it is often that professionals in other fields come in overconfident that their skill in whatever profession they chose (whether it be medicine, law, engineering) should transfer over into trading... Well, here's a newsflash: It doesn't mean jack. The vast majority of these people will get destroyed, for not having the right temperament to trade.

"Whatever they did in life, how well they did in their past occupation, and their previous successes do not equate to success in trading.

Being wealthy or being really smart also does not equate to success in trading. In fact, some of the biggest losers are doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, programmers, analysts, business owners, CEOs, retirees, etc. Why? Because typically, these people have this desire to always be right and for some reason, they refuse to take losses until they are annihilated."

g
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I agree, although in my line of work I don't have to be right 100% of the time and can still be successful. There is a degree of variance involved in practicing engineering. But I don't plan on bringing that mindset over into trading.
 
Quote from Crispy:

OP -

The nice thing about trading financial markets is that it need not be the end all career. If you already have a career that earns great money trading can be a very nice bump in your yearly income, if you play right and do not expect a weekly or monthly paycheck to come of it.
You wait for your spot and take names. no need to trade daily or even once week.

Psychologically speaking a nice income makes trading easier...yes, MUCH easier. "No worries mate", get it?

Why put undue pressure on yourself? Track mkts....develop a strat....and all in your spare time with true risk capital that you can afford to lose.
More...

Yes, that is what I plan to do now. Keep my day job and trade the daily and weekly charts.
 
wow...this thread

this is the OP

its been a couple of years since i started this thread

i spent about 6 months reading books non-stop and realized it didn't help much at all with trading and that i wasn't learning much

i then spent 6 months trying to trade my own account...i think i started with $50k as a base but i was trading small

after winning and losing here and there i closed my account...eventually i broke even...maybe even a slight loss if you factor in the cost of books and education

i had created a number of systems that had backtested successfully but none that would return more than 20% on a consistent basis...this told me that there was no way for me to quit my day job and make a consistent living off of this

i learned about others who had spent their entire lives trying to trade and ended up with futile results

i decided to take a more sure and safe approach...i applied for my MBA

recently i was accepted into a top 15 MBA program and will be starting school this fall!

hopefully i can get onto a trading desk even though trading recruiting has dropped significantly at the big banks

more updates to come later
 
Banks always hire new talent from schools. MBA is less desired than other degrees.

Good job being honest with yourself. You'll do fine.
 
Quote from sneakoner:

wow...this thread

this is the OP

its been a couple of years since i started this thread

i spent about 6 months reading books non-stop and realized it didn't help much at all with trading and that i wasn't learning much

i then spent 6 months trying to trade my own account...i think i started with $50k as a base but i was trading small

after winning and losing here and there i closed my account...eventually i broke even...maybe even a slight loss if you factor in the cost of books and education

i had created a number of systems that had backtested successfully but none that would return more than 20% on a consistent basis...this told me that there was n
o way for me to quit my day job and make a consistent living off of this

i learned about others who had spent their entire lives trying to trade and ended up with futile results

i decided to take a more sure and safe approach...i applied for my MBA

recently i was accepted into a top 15 MBA program and will be starting school this fall!

hopefully i can get onto a trading desk even though trading recruiting has dropped significantly at the big banks

more updates to come later
More...

Words if wisdom!None of those ET clowns are making anything in trading.Trading is a losers game for 99% of ETers.Your on the right path,Sneakoner.Forget about trading unless you have at least a half of mil.Or you'd end up like the scratcher Raskolnikov Lurcum et al.Read they posts,the dudes are desperate!
 
Quote from sneakoner:
i spent about 6 months reading books non-stop and realized it didn't help much at all with trading and that i wasn't learning much

i then spent 6 months trying to trade my own account...i think i started with $50k as a base but i was trading small

after winning and losing here and there i closed my account...eventually i broke even...maybe even a slight loss if you factor in the cost of books and education

i had created a number of systems that had backtested successfully but none that would return more than 20% on a consistent basis...this told me that there was no way for me to quit my day job and make a consistent living off of this

i learned about others who had spent their entire lives trying to trade and ended up with futile results

i decided to take a more sure and safe approach...i applied for my MBA
More...
If you can return 20% with any consistency, you can beat most fund managers. But obviously you cannot live on 20% x $50k. After you get the MBA, you might focus on finding a job that doesn't suck too bad. That will put you way ahead of most working stiffs. Then when you have $300-500k saved, you can go back to working that 20% system. That's pretty much the path I ended up on anyway. You will be old, but you will be happy. Any shorter path is like winning the lottery. A few make it, but it requires a lot of luck.
 
Quote from rwk:

If you can return 20% with any consistency, you can beat most fund managers. But obviously you cannot live on 20% x $50k. After you get the MBA, you might focus on finding a job that doesn't suck too bad. That will put you way ahead of most working stiffs. Then when you have $300-500k saved, you can go back to working that 20% system. That's pretty much the path I ended up on anyway. You will be old, but you will be happy. Any shorter path is like winning the lottery. A few make it, but it requires a lot of luck.
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From my point of view I think its easier for an individual to make 20% consistently than it is for a fund manager - the latter is moving large amounts of capital that can be picked up by others including HFT's, day traders, etc.

The most important thing I learned from my journey was the process in which successful traders use to trade the markets.

They watch the markets, come up with an idea, mine the data and then backtest a method. Then every 3 months or so they do a Monte Carlo simulation to ensure their system is still trading within their degree of comfort. Once the system fails, they go back, rinse and repeat. As an engineer I'm much more comfortable with this system than reading price action in real time and trading by what I see.
 
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