Medicine or Wall Street?

[tomahawk]

dazed, let me just say congratulations on your career choice and I think you will find 30 years from now that you will not have a single regret about your decision. I've known people who started on the path toward medicine in college, but then veered off and did something else, and now have major regrets 20 years later.

You can always continue to educate yourself about investing, and of course being so young you have the advantage of time on your side. Using a few sound investment practices such as diversification and dollar cost averaging you should have a very healthy portfolio by the time you retire, in addition to the satisfacion of knowing you made a real and tangible difference for countless people through your life's work.

Good fortune to you.

 

[adadadog]

Quote from Ripley:

Come on.. Find your passion in life. Use college to find your passion.

The smartest person I know, he could've done anything in life as a freshman at the finest educational institution in America... ended up majoring in Anthropology and is digging up graves in Africa right now.

+1

U.S. college allow you to decide after two years. Money alone will not motivate you day in and day out. You need find out what you are good at and enjoy doing it.

 

[JamesL]

Your biggest mistake when you attempted to trade was the excessive use of leverage. It is designed to separate you from your money. You won't have that issue anymore with US brokers.

Research some well know brokers and start small sizes and learn the product. You won't get that grand slam that all these flashy brokers tease the retail trader with but it gives you a better chance to build your account slowly and give you hopefully a flatter equity curve.

BTW, it took me over 5 years before I became consistently profitable trading fx. Trying to succeed while carrying the load of a medical career/studies is just hard IMO .

 

[atticus]

Nursing

 

[rtiger29]

Quote from clearinghouse:

I became a trader and my brother became a doctor. I have variable income and he has steady income, and I have less job stability than he does. He actually likes working with people, and I generally don't. On the flip side, he still has 6 figure debt to pay off and this magic 500k you are talking about only happens if you beat other people into getting into the specialization that you want. I'm debt free, but live off of a modest draw which is deducted from trading profit, and I generally live like a middle-class pauper until year end, when if it's a good year, I have some fun and if it's a bad year I wonder how to adjust my strategy.

If you want to make money, you kind of have to keep your eyes open to what the world is presenting as opportunity and not look at what the world presented as opportunity in the past. Consider all these law school graduates who thought they were going to make it big and are now sitting in piles of debt. Same with medicine. What can change?

You know how trading strategies stop working? Well, career strategies stop working too. If the herd realizes the field is lush, they'll saturate it and draw attention to it. Maybe politicians will pay attention too, and things change for the worse. It's just the way things are, and population growth and accessibility to education isn't working in your favor. It makes sense to look at career choices within the context of game theory or a trading decision.

Very well said. And i agree 100%, i have to hear my ex tell me how much in debt she is with her law school loans. Adapt or be killed

 

[newwurldmn]

Quote from dazed101:

didn't mean to bump up a 5.5 year old thread. But just as an update, I'm now a second year medical student doing the whole doctor thing until I can do the whole investing thing.

Since I started this thread 5 years and 4 months ago, I have spent at least a few thousand hours trying to figure this whole trading thing. I opened a 1k forex account with 200:1 leverage in 2007, lost all of that in just a few months. Then I tried again with another 2k forex account in 2007, this time with 500:1 leverage, again, I lost 1k and closed that.

Seeing the bad results and realizing that I really didn't know what I was doing despite all that time I spent learning technical analysis (I was pretty good at discerning candlesticks), I proceeded to take the MCAT and studied hard to get into med school.

Not much happened in terms of trading from 2007 to 2010. 2008 was just another normal year for me. I paid attention to the markets but it wasn't my #1 focus.

Fast forward to 2010, since I graduated a bit before the full 4 years, I had some time before I started med school, so I spent the last few months before school analyzing why I didn't succeed in trading.

After reading a lot of books on fundamental analysis (something I didn't do the first time), I've come to realize that what I did before was pure speculation. The extreme amount of leverage certainly contributed to me blowing up my accounts. Even if I was right in buying a dip or a strong breakout, the extraordinary amount of leverage made each small tremor in price very difficult to stomach, which often resulted in me getting out at the worst possible time with a big haircut.

I also realized during this time that the very best investors in the world NEVER exceed 30% annualized returns over a long period of time. If they also don't normally use leverage, why should I?

So I have concluded that what one needs to attain great wealth through Mr. Market can be achieved with just a reasonable premium over the risk free rate compounded over time.

Anyways, I'm just looking for discounted value now, mainly in small to mid cap equities. There's still some work to do before I'm really ready to take the plunge with significant capital (like when I actually start earning a paycheck ), but I feel like my early stumbles will be well worth the effort one day.

Good investing to all.

I have a feeling you will do very well in life regardless what you do in your career.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from dazed101:

Well, you are partly right... doctors start working an average of 50-60 hours a week, and by then they are probably tired of learning and give up too easily when it comes to investing.

I'm mostly right.

Doctors are smart, accomplished, and therefore think they can "handle anything", including investments... not realizing that to do investing well requires specialized knowledge and experience.... in a way, similar to what they've learned in their profession... without the prerequisites of (1) formal schooling and (2) OTJ training they've experienced as residents and fellows.

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from tomahawk:

dazed, let me just say congratulations on your career choice and I think you will find 30 years from now that you will not have a single regret about your decision.

Ehh, you assume too much. Medicine is not the cash cow it once was, unless you are being hooked up into an established practice. It's whole different world nowadays.

If he actually likes Med school and is not financing it through loans, he should be OK. Otherwise, he will be doubting his choice upon graduation.

 

[hoffmanw]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

Ehh, you assume too much. Medicine is not the cash cow it once was, unless you are being hooked up into an established practice. It's whole different world nowadays.

If he actually likes Med school and is not financing it through loans, he should be OK. Otherwise, he will be doubting his choice upon graduation.

Agree. Unless the doctors own private practices and not work in hospital settings, their salaries are comparable to nurses' salaries with overtime nowadays. Many doctors in their 40's and 50's are having trouble paying their student loans .

 

[dazed101]

Quote from Scataphagos:

I'm mostly right.

Doctors are smart, accomplished, and therefore think they can "handle anything", including investments... not realizing that to do investing well requires specialized knowledge and experience.... in a way, similar to what they've learned in their profession... without the prerequisites of (1) formal schooling and (2) OTJ training they've experienced as residents and fellows.

Alright, I concede you are right about accomplished investors needing a 1) good foundation and 2) OTJ training. I also realized that after reviewing what happened to my investing forays earlier in college.

What's really nice about this day and age is that one can easily find online the syllabus for most if not all of the classes that some top business schools offer at their schools. For example, Wharton has all of their undergrad and MBA classes' syllabi online. This is nice because I went through most of their relevant books over the last year and half. While it isn't a substitute for formal education and the concomitant teacher/peer discussions, it's not a bad way to get a decent foundation either.

After doing that, my perception of the markets changed drastically. I can now understand why different pieces of the capital structure are not priced in the same way. Because various classes of securities lay claim to different parts of a business, they are 1) looked at by people with different investment objectives, and 2) fluctuate in distinct ways to the same new info. This is very useful knowledge in thinking about how to construct a non-correlated portfolio.

In the end of the day, a lot of successful investing also comes down to patience, strictness in safety, and waiting for that oh-so fat pitch. I still have much to learn.

Anyways, I just thought how lucky this doctor wife of yours is to have a person of sound judgment in the family.

Medicine is fun too, while it requires a lot of sacrifice, I'm pleasantly surprised by what I've learned from my standardized patients. Hopefully, I will get to enjoy the fruits of my labor from both worlds one day.

Best wishes.