Should I go to college before becoming a trader?

You need to do some reading, particularly the work of Mark Douglas and Brett Steenbarger, and plenty of chart research but I don't think college is the place for it.

Try to get a reputable mentor, someone with a verifiable track record.

Expect to pay in the excess of 25 grand for a serious mentor.
 
Quote from Vishnu:

Traders who don't go to college have a HUGE head start on traders who go to college:

A) 5 extra years to build a stake (average # of years it takes kids to graduate right now)

B) you don't get $200k in debt

C) you can actually spend the time studying trading (they don't teach it in college)

D) you don't learn how to fail in college. You can learn that on your own without paying the expensive tuition

E) you can work. Working is the best way to learn how companies operate. Stocks are companies.

F) you don't have to unlearn anything. After 5 years of higher education I then had to go to remedial classes when I got a job in order to unlearn all of the bad habits I got.

G) going to a "top tier" school, as someone suggested, is even worse. You get a false feeling of success that is deadly for traders.

H) you can start a small business during that time. Again, learning business is the best way to learn how to trade real companies, even if you are a TA trader.

I) you can travel. Learning what the rest of the world is like (as opposed to reading about it in a book) is the best way to learn macro analysis. Is India booming? Ride down the streets of Bangalore in a rickshaw and find out. And yes, it costs money to travel but not as much as tuition. I bought my entire wardrobe last year in India for $150. And yes, I look like shit.

J) you can start trading earlier. Don't think you can trade while you are taking classes. That's called "stupid". And the earlier you start trading, the less painful your "tution" will be when you first take that big loss.

There's more but that's a start. Actually, NOBODY should go to college. But there's really zero reason for traders to go to college.

-James Altucher
trader, hedge fund manager, and author of "40 Alternatives to College"
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James - I love point I, particularly on the wardrobe. You figured things out when you learned how to self deprecate.

Fundamentally, to do any interesting "work" (get a job) college makes it a tad easier... And unless you are a great self-teacher (which most aren't...) the skills you might learn in school (not talking about much of liberal arts) will actually be valuable.

That said, I'd be impressed if somehow I ended up when making interview/hiring decisions with a resume of a non-degree'd candidate who put in the 'education' section: Self taught linear algebra from MIT opencourseware, etc etc ... They aren't typical though. But maybe that is the resume of the future....

And on B: you don't need to get in $200K of debt to go to school. A bit of a stretch to make your point.

And the problem with C: "learning trading" is full of generally false lessons depending on one's experience. The only empirical truths can be summarized in a few short paragraphs, and take years of systematic approach to train the right behaviors (if they aren't already natural). Just as easily, going ad hoc to teach yourself trading ends in failure because 99% of the time, we don't know how to practice.
 
And then there is the reality that if you want to be employable and are unconnected, HR people (the gatekeepers) will filter out non-graduates by default.

The optimal strategy is to get a cheap degree in this case, and attempt to build the network.

No doubt the education model is in flux --- and in a good way for the long term. I look forward to a whole new generation of better self-teachers.

That said -- the best advice I can offer is this: whatever you get a degree in, pursue expertise that you know the market will value more than you hope the market will value.
 
Quote from Player01:

Is it worth investing both time and money into post secondary education if my intent is to become a full time trader? For example, four years for a bachelor of commerce and then another year and a half for a MBA. What are some of the better routes leading to this career?
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Yes, definitely go to college before becoming a trader! if you are really super motivated you can trade while in college eg Ken Griffin of Citadel...
 
Quote from NoDoji:

The answer is: The trader should continue to trade every valid setup that presents itself because "there is a random distribution of wins and losses that define an edge".

Anyone who can accurately "predict" which valid setups will result in winning trades is psychic and will soon be the richest person alive.

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/14/its-one-of-the-more/

Go rats!
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Hi Donna:

Thank you for making it clear why coin flipping doesnot work for any moment in trading time.

As you make clear, Flipping cions only appleis to defined events in trading.

I person has to first sort through the possible events in markets and give them names. By grouping envents by their characterisitcs, then and only then can one determine which group characterisitcs are viable. Many groups are not viable because of an assortment of reasons. One for this type selection is probability. AS a person forward tests, they can first see the beging of the characterized event and tabulate its probability.

The range of probabilites is very interesting. Almost all inverse probabilites are already eliminated. And some almost sure bets do appear. For example both retraces and reversals come out of the same general characterisitcs and only when you get to finer details they get differentiated.

Any trader who trades high probability groups of characterisitcs will make money.

Many people use additional routines to enhance the probabilities. The universal one (which we saw rejected by Mr Nate, immediately) was the wash trade.

He also had omitted the first stage of the grouping of events and defining their unique characters so he was in a bad mental state that could precipitate feelings that addressed basic survival.

thank you for making it clear when the only enent (not any time) when coin flipping may be invoked. Trading strategies and plans can only stem from the knowledge of how parts of the market work.

Gradually, through massive work, all these events can be boiled down to adjacent unique data slugs that occur very frequently (one at each moment of data change). There are 56.

Most traders compose (unknowingly) "edges" by combining sets of the 56 elements. The sets have a common quality content. The elements that compose a set are always in the same order.

It follows, then that those sets that are least likely to form a given set are the worst performing sets for making money. Taleb never found this out and he never noticed how a finite set (56) elements could be used to form every possible combination. He also never noticed the cause: granulatity of all data.

Slugs of data are not determined by chopping time up regularly. A slug may only be determined one after another when an element if its definition has changes.

In formal education students goe through successive deadenings of their potential use of their minds. Obviously, my points are too long to be able to make a single point.

Donna you made the point of just where coin flipping can be used. And we find it doesn't work on edges that work.
 
Quote from Player01:

Is it worth investing both time and money into post secondary education if my intent is to become a full time trader?
More...

Yes, if you want to learn programming, probability, statistics, and some more math that could be very useful for trading.
 
Quote from Player01:

Is it worth investing both time and money into post secondary education if my intent is to become a full time trader? For example, four years for a bachelor of commerce and then another year and a half for a MBA. What are some of the better routes leading to this career?
More...

Survival comes first, following your dreams comes second.

What a stupid site this has become.
 
Quote from jack hershey:

Hi Donna:

Thank you for making it clear why coin flipping doesnot work for any moment in trading time.

As you make clear, Flipping cions only appleis to defined events in trading.

I person has to first sort through the possible events in markets and give them names. By grouping envents by their characterisitcs, then and only then can one determine which group characterisitcs are viable. Many groups are not viable because of an assortment of reasons. One for this type selection is probability. AS a person forward tests, they can first see the beging of the characterized event and tabulate its probability.

The range of probabilites is very interesting. Almost all inverse probabilites are already eliminated. And some almost sure bets do appear. For example both retraces and reversals come out of the same general characterisitcs and only when you get to finer details they get differentiated.

Any trader who trades high probability groups of characterisitcs will make money.

Many people use additional routines to enhance the probabilities. The universal one (which we saw rejected by Mr Nate, immediately) was the wash trade.

He also had omitted the first stage of the grouping of events and defining their unique characters so he was in a bad mental state that could precipitate feelings that addressed basic survival.

thank you for making it clear when the only enent (not any time) when coin flipping may be invoked. Trading strategies and plans can only stem from the knowledge of how parts of the market work.

Gradually, through massive work, all these events can be boiled down to adjacent unique data slugs that occur very frequently (one at each moment of data change). There are 56.

Most traders compose (unknowingly) "edges" by combining sets of the 56 elements. The sets have a common quality content. The elements that compose a set are always in the same order.

It follows, then that those sets that are least likely to form a given set are the worst performing sets for making money. Taleb never found this out and he never noticed how a finite set (56) elements could be used to form every possible combination. He also never noticed the cause: granulatity of all data.

Slugs of data are not determined by chopping time up regularly. A slug may only be determined one after another when an element if its definition has changes.

In formal education students goe through successive deadenings of their potential use of their minds. Obviously, my points are too long to be able to make a single point.

Donna you made the point of just where coin flipping can be used. And we find it doesn't work on edges that work.
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JH, I'll tell you straight what I think of you.

You're full of your own bullshit, too full of it to realise how stupid you are, devoid of rationallity, a cretin that devalues and dumbs down this site, that makes common sense seem like an offense. You bore me, you are an irrelevance, you are a piece of shit that that stinks when I step on it, a squeeky toy with an irritating sound, you are spam, an annoyance, a tollerated buffoon, a puff pastry with no substance, a grey old man with faded dreams of grandeur.

Fuck you JH and all those that support you. :cool:
 
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