The odds of day trading yourself to a profit are lower than you expect"

[lovethetrade]

I did not miss the point, you did not specify correctly. Did not learn that at the university?

I specified it correctly, albeit with slight ambiguity. My apologies.

So basically you say that there is no absolute link between university and profitable trading. Which is the opposite of your first posting?

Correct, no link whatsoever. Use of GPAs was purely for comparative purposes to distinguish the ones that achieve success in this specific trade and ones that do not.

You will NEVER learn the skills you need at the university. Some of these skills also have to do with you personality, character, control of emotions and stress... So not really part of a university education.

Agree but there's also another important element youre missing that makes character and emotional control null and void without it. You have to know what to look for. If you don't know what to look for you can have all the discipline, character and emotional control in the world and still lose money.

 

[d08]

No degree here either. Universities at least in the first year are about screwing around and socializing for the most part. Some people just want to learn a specific trade and not be distracted with what they consider non-sense.

 

[Mtrader]

Correct, no link whatsoever. Use of GPAs was purely for comparative purposes to distinguish the ones that achieve success in this specific trade and ones that do not.

Agree, but there's also another important element youre missing that makes character and emotional control null and void without it. You have to know what to look for. If you don't know what to look for you can have all the discipline, character and emotional control in the world and still lose money.

Correct, that's why I wrote "Some of these skills...". Make a complete list of what is useful and what is necessary is not easy.

Very strong analytic skills is good too, to find links that others cannot find.
Skills to solve problems that never occurred before, and thinking "out of the box", is useful too as you will bump into, till then unknown problems, while developing a system. And you will have to solve these problems yourself without being able to rely on solutions of the past.

I have a slight touch of autism too. That helps a lot in trading, as I can wait, if needed hours, before entering a trade. I have a plan and only trade if all the parameters are correct.

 

[Metamega]

Well I think that number may be low. Seems like every thread I see about someone trying to become a day trader usually involves no plan and a 25k or less account. Seems most people try to make by being in the worse position, having to make money to pay the rent, under sized, no plan.

 

[Laissez Faire]

No degree here either. Universities at least in the first year are about screwing around and socializing for the most part. Some people just want to learn a specific trade and not be distracted with what they consider non-sense.

I disagree.

If you go to a good university and take a science related degree or economics, you will have to apply yourself and work extremely hard to get good results. It will teach you work ethics and analytical skills. You also have deadlines to adhere to. There's plenty of people who fail at this since they lack both discipline and smarts.

Now, I'm not saying it will teach you to trade or that you need a degree to become a trader, but a higher education definitely hold some sort of value.

I don't think most people take the art of learning trading as seriously as elite students do their academical studies. Many students work 10+ hours per day as much as 7 days per week in their final periods.

I wonder what results a would-be trader could achive if he did that for say three years? The equivalent of a bachelors degree. Or say five years for a masters degree. Or 8+ years for a PhD degree.

I'm sure most don't.

 

[Mtrader]

Well I think that number may be low. Seems like every thread I see about someone trying to become a day trader usually involves no plan and a 25k or less account. Seems most people try to make by being in the worse position, having to make money to pay the rent, under sized, no plan.

These failure numbers are meaningless for you. The most important thing is to find out how YOUR chances are. How good are YOU?
If you are an idiot you will even fail if 99% will win.
If you are really good, you will even win if 99% will lose.
So start by finding out what YOU can, not what the others can.

The only reason why so many fail is because nobody has to pass any exam. The biggest moron with $2000 can start trading. And there are a lot of morons who think they will become a profitable trader as you see the rate of failure.
In fact most people always think they are better than the average human. At least 50% is wrong mathematically. But everybody thinks the others are below average, not they.

 

[Mtrader]

Many students work 10+ hours per day as much as 7 days per week in their final periods.

That's what all successful people do, no matter what they studied. Has nothing to do with university or not. Has to do with commitment (or maybe even obsession), and the will to succeed. Motivation. Many successful businessmen never went to university.

 

[lovethetrade]

Agreed, it's what you can get out of it, not the standards set by others. When you start thinking like that that's when you start making serious $$$. It's all about breaking the shackles and taking it to another level.

 

[Thor]

Trading has nothing to do with a university degree. If you think that you made it because you have a university degree, you are wrong. Life will teach you that there is no one on one link between this degree and your salary.

In trading probabilities are important because they can help you making money. In deciding wether to become a trader or not, probabilties are useless. So don't care if 90% never make money. In every area where there are succes stories, the majority will never have succes. That's the "defintion" of succes: achieve something most cannot achieve. If not it would be called mediocre.

The degree has nothing to do with it. Discipline with a system that works, but finding that system can take years.

 

[Xela]

The degree has nothing to do with it.

I agree completely.

The process of education itself is about what stays with you long after most of the specific stuff you learned has been forgotten.

I did an academic degree which had absolutely nothing to do with trading at all, but the skills I learned at university were still enormously helpful to me in eventually becoming profitable in the long term as a trader.

(There's a reason that at so many financial institutions worldwide, you need a good degree even to get as far as being interviewed for a trading-floor trainee position.)