Medicine. THEN Wall Street. You will find there is a career diode (a word worth looking up) which dictates a doctor can become an investor / speculator / plunger, but not vice versa. Therefore do them in the only practicable order.
Medicine or Wall Street?
- Thread starter dazed101
- Start date
Definitely go the medical school route if you can handle it. Go for cardiology if you can; tons of money in that field. Trading jobs are next to impossible to get, unless you have connections or went to an ivy league school, plus you have to most of the time work in NYC or Chicago. With medicine, you can get a job anywhere in the country and you'll be in demand your whole life anywhere you go.
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.
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.
Retail forex is not trading its casino. Thatis your first mistake. Stick to medical school.
that's probably true. currencies don't produce cashflow, unlike stocks. trading currencies is alot like buying gold. it seems to work, but then it doesn't
Also retail forex you are trading against your broker, its the equivalent of slots. The fact that his first venture into trading was retail forex pretty much shows his ignorance and lack of effort by trying to take shortcuts without even understanding what he was getting himself into.
My wife is a doc, so I've hung around them for many years. Of the 20 or so I know well, none is any good at investing at all.... not only poor at investing, also weak on general and personal financial knowledge on any level. Most have tried some things, failed, now just let someone like TIAA-CREFF hold their money.
With the right effort, most could become at least decent investors (not to mention learning how to protect themselves from getting occasionally creamed by Mr. Market)... even on a part-time basis.
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.
Well, you are partly right, but haven't you ever been swayed into mistakes by snappy advertisements when you first started?
Yup, there aren't any shortcuts. There never were.
You are mostly correct with that comment. I think the reason why most doctors can't do well investing with Mr. Market is that they really don't have time. Most people don't realize the HUGE amount of time that is necessary to become a competent physician. Most doctors are learning facts for anywhere from 60-80 hours a week for the entire duration of medical school and residency (except for the 4th year of med school). I probably spent at least 60 hours a week last year sitting down and learning NEW things every single week. This is in stark contrast to when I was in college and only had to study a few days before a test.
Then these 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.
As you said, with the right amount of effort, which would be rather significant, most doctors can become decent or better investors.
Anyways, I now see much of successful investing is learning how to invest in a business like fashion. There's an upper limit of return rates to investment gains in any given period just like there are upper limits to how much a business can grow. With time, intrinsic value is generally recognized by the market, with many periods of euphoria and depression nicely sprinkled in the middle.
Good investing.