Experienced, successful traders, how did you get started?

FU, I know how it reads. I spent all of the gains from 1996 on travel, booze, MDMA, Ibiza, hooers and a Hummer H1. I lost a bit on Q1 1997 and had to earn my way out of my IRS debt. Sold the H1 at a big loss.

Shady.

I think you're drinking the chivas. I was telling IAlways to not follow your resume' of...

"I trade vol all through college. I also.."

...with "meep meep". Sorry you missed the context.
 
IAlwaysWin, that is a terrible, terrible follow-up to destriero's resume'. Never be the second-act that is worse than the headliner.
Not everyone can be a Jordan Belfort like destriero. I come from a simple background.
 
Started trading the evening pit session at the CBoT whilst keeping my day job as a Nuclear Engineer for Commonwealth Edison. I leased a Full Evening Seat for like $200 per month or something. Cleared TransMarket Group and was mentored in spread trading by Ray Cahnman. Things really took off for me when Project A and the evening Globex electronic trading sessions started - all of a sudden I had all of these inter market spread vehicles available to me and electronic FIFO order matching was a hell of a lot better for me than the old boys club in the pit.

What helped tremendously was keeping my full time job; it allowed me to learn at a reasonable pace without forcing trades and pressing. I learned how to buy bids, sell offers, make markets, and get into and out of the market like a mechanic before I started spread trading futures and occasionally options.

I'm of the opinion that it's a disaster in the making for someone to just take a wad of cash, quit everything, and then decide they're going to trade as a full time job without any sort of background or viable trading system.
 
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There was a bizarre bit of fortune that got me started in the OTC energy field.

Tom Donovan, the CEO of the CBoT, asked the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (James O'Connor) to sit on the Board of the CBoT (Irish Mafia). As luck would have it, Ray Cahnman (TransMarket), Bobby Corvino, and a couple of floor brokers who worked the evening pit session were also on the Board. James O'Connor shows up at the first meeting, and out of nowhere half of the Board of Directors tells him that they know a Nuclear Engineer that works for him. (My badge name was "NUK"). And I am told he was perplexed.

A couple weeks later I get a page at Zion Nuclear Power Station - it's James O'Connor's Executive Assistant telling me to report at the nineteenth floor in the First National Bank Building the following Monday morning - and that I am no longer a Nuclear Engineer and that I am going to help a recent executive hire from Lehman Brothers start up an energy trading desk for Commonwealth Edison.

So that's how that happened.
 
There was a bizarre bit of fortune that got me started in the OTC energy field.

Tom Donovan, the CEO of the CBoT, asked the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (James O'Connor) to sit on the Board of the CBoT (Irish Mafia). As luck would have it, Ray Cahnman (TransMarket), Bobby Corvino, and a couple of floor brokers who worked the evening pit session were also on the Board. James O'Connor shows up at the first meeting, and out of nowhere half of the Board of Directors tells him that they know a Nuclear Engineer that works for him. (My badge name was "NUK"). And I am told he was perplexed.

A couple weeks later I get a page at Zion Nuclear Power Station - it's James O'Connor's Executive Assistant telling me to report at the nineteenth floor in the First National Bank Building the following Monday morning - and that I am no longer a Nuclear Engineer and that I am going to help a recent executive hire from Lehman Brothers start up an energy trading desk for Commonwealth Edison.

So that's how that happened.

Energy? As in Electricity?

I've always wondered what that was like. The local energy company regularly hires for their hedge desk. I have no idea how you even sell a future in electricity.
 
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