Trading after a job layoff

Hello dfuang, when you have a hair-up-your-arse compulsion such as yours, "... I won't forgive myself if I don't try.", go ahead and try.

Are medical insurance payments for you, your wife and children included in your expenses ? How much have you set aside in your 'emergency money fund' - car needs repairs ? Since there's usually a requirement to search/interview and find employment when receiving 'unemployment income', you'd better have worked out the results of that financial loss were you to be cut-off.

Working from home, will you have a separate 'office' ? Will it matter to you that you will be alone during your trading day ? You must not expect that because you are doing something 'you've always wanted to do' and that its success is 'important to all of us' that you and your trading requirements have priority over the other family members. Do not expect that their lives should be changed to accomodate you. You will be at HOME and your wife and children will expect to communicate with you and not expect to suddenly become invisible and soundless. Do not alienate and fracture your family.

Borrow from your library ‘Elliott Wave Principle : Key to Market Behavior' by Frost and Prechter, originally published in the 1970s, the last edition is 1990 ? NB: This is not a trading system and, I do not mean for you to become an 'Elliottician'. LOTS on the Net. Your library is your source for 'free' books, the Inter-Library Loan service searches for loans throughout the US of A and Canada, a fee may be required by some loaners.

Some individuals are admirably suited for scalping/intraday trading, which nevertheless doesn't guarantee profits. Day-to-Days trading offers a larger trading safety because fewer trades are made, and one is distanced enough from the market to see the forest. Demo trading is useful, particularly to test your trading system/s.

NOTHING replaces the actual feeling the individual experiences when trading. There is something about loosing one's money that can have a shattering effect on an individual. A loss or losses may stop the individual from trading, prevent them from 'pulling the trigger'. Massive psychological block. Nothing approaches the gut churning terror of a losing trade. That is why demo trading means nothing. Demo trading does not create the actual emotional and psychological experience unique to risking your money, nor how you will react and extricate yourself from a losing trade, or where/when you will take profit.

Consider trading forex. Read the EliteTrader 'Forex' forum and the MoneyTec forex dedicated forums.
I recommend you start your broker research at FXCM, the reference for the following. Mini lot Account Margin $300. EUR/USD mini lot margin $130, pip/tick = $1. No commissions. Free realtime data and charts, chat/phone customer support. Instant fills, stops etc guaranteed. Fx trades 24x6, technical Close at 6pm EST Mon-Thur/Fri 4pm, trading week opens Sunday 5pm EST. Free demo account to test/practice system/trading.

Open an fx demo account and between now and Feb 1/04, study/demo trade. Feb 1/04 open a trading account with $500 margin and trade your system with 1 only mini lot. Look at the Daily chart and determine the largest price range between the L/H to H/L of any two consecutive trading days, that's the 'price swing' minimum Account Margin required to 'hold' the DtD trade of 'that' currency pair. When DtD trading, use a 60 min chart to alert/confirm trend change. Review your trade each evening. If you are able to access your broker's site from your workplace, have a glance at prices during your day, or phone and ask for a quote. Don't become obsessive about what the price is doing. When accumulated profits are double the 'price swing', double the mini lots traded.
This site shows the major time divisions of the fx trading day: http://www.aboutforex.com/timezones.html

The above is a financial low risk price to pay in order to experience trading, learn/discover your trading psychology/reactivenes, and learn something of what it takes for YOU to trade consistently and profitably, and perhaps learn whether you really want to 'earn your living' this way.

This Advanced Get trading pdf is useful: http://www.moneytec.com/forums/_showthread/_s-68cf17766ae05ba76de305ed9f775f82/_threadid-5084

Finally, write down and display prominently "I am prepared to loose XXXXX dollars before ending my 'try'".
Beneath that, write down, in detail, what you intend to do if your 'try' ends.


Best wishes for your success dfuang. Wallace.
 
actually you only need $1000.00 trading capital to begin earning a nice six figure income. 1kto100k.com

Oh if it were only that easy .
 
Quote from babe714:

actually you only need $1000.00 trading capital to begin earning a nice six figure income. 1kto100k.com

Oh if it were only that easy .
More...

Nice to see the world of pennies is alive and well. Trick to this is easy (NOT SAYING THEY DID THIS NOR AM I ADVISING ANYONE TO DO THIS).
Start a site with a similiar claim. Buy a penny here and there. Get someone with a wad of cash to start buying it and try to run it up. You sell it at a profit, maybe your friend who ran it up will lose but only in the short run. As people log on, you post a pick, people buy it and run it up and you sell into that strength.

Now for anyone saying how devious, well check out what some funds were doing with those at the time thinly traded internet stocks, ie. Yahoo, etc.. Buy a majority of the float and you can control the price action.

This whole game is nothing but moving paper around.
 
I agree with Wallace regarding the forex trading, but would suggest Oanda as your forex broker.

They allow you to start very, very small (pip=$0.01 for example).

Place $100 in your forex account and practice your strategies until cows come home.
 
Yes, I support Miki's suggestion.

Oanda is a reputable broker, registered and has an Oanda users' forum. Relatively speaking the amount one first trades with has no bearing on the success of one's trading/system. Wallace.
 
The word I left out of my statement was that these option positions eliminate the variable of "picking" the stock direction when you're on both sides. Any fool understands the underlying instrument has to move for you to gain unless you're selling options or have more complex positions. Lindq, don't know who you are, and furthermore don't care. I've been trading options for many years now and found them excellent for beginners (I learned options first, sorry if your thinking can't handle such an advanced order of learning).

Happy Holidays.

Rossmedia
 
dfuang,

One thing I did not yet see is anyone asking is why did you leave your Series 7 job, and move to a job which is further away from the trading markets? You don't have to answer this publicly, but you should at least answer it to yourself. Then, consider whether this has any bearing on your qualifications to trade.

Do you realize there is considerable churn-and-burn in the retail end of the brokerage industry. All brokerages doing any retail business recruit a lot of green prospects in the hopes that a small number would work out in the long run. They actually expect most to fail. They do hope that some of the friends & family accounts which the green recruits brought in might stay after the recruit washes out. Aside from that, the drop-outs are simply a cost of finding the few really good ones.

From another angle, remember what is a Series 7. It is a license to be a "registered rep." That is a sales job, for better or for worse. A sales job is about being able to persuade people to part with their money in exchange for a piece of paper which might increase in value. When trading, how do you propose to persuade the market to part with its money?

Also, as a Series 7 registered rep, did you do any discretionary trading for your clients? Probably not. If your compliance department had any teeth, then the only decisions on what trades to make either came from your customers themselves, or else what your firm had on its "preferred list" of securities which you were authorized to recommend.

You have two different types of experience in sales. That may hold more potential for you as a lucrative profession than might trading. So, leverage that, and go for a more gradual transition into trading.

With banks increasingly taking advantage of their recently being allowed to get into investments and other financial services, cross-market expertise might be leveraged more effectively there. Just understand that if you do any trading on the side, some banks will insist that you do all trades in an account within the house so that it may be audited for compliance reasons.

Your mileage may vary.
 
If you can manage to open an account at a daytrading site in Canada, then you will be by-passing the the SEC rules for pattern day traders. Some American brokerages have Canadian branches. But that would be unethical, so maybe it is not a good idea. Best of luck to you.:D
 
From "The Futures Game: Who Wins, Who Loses, & Why" and the nominees for Best Loser are... [drumroll]

1) The Blair ("Witch") - Stewart Study
8922 grain futures traders from 1924 to 1932. 75% were losers with Avg net loss of $1812 per trader and the winners' with Avg net profit of $945 per trader.

2) The Hieronymus ("Bosch") Study
462 accounts in 1969. 65% were losers with Avg net loss of $3783 per trader and the winners' with Avg net profit $2819 per trader.

3) The ("Norman") Rockwell Study
Over a period of 18 years from 1947, small speculators lost 11 out of 18 years, grossing -$3.5 Million as a group. And only two of those years accounted for the vast majority of all profits.

4) The Ross ("Well") Study
Out of 2637 customers, the losers' net loss was more than double that of the winners, grossing -$2.6 Million as a group in 1970-71 (and that's not even including commission which was $8 Million).
More...

The envelope please... and the Best Loser is...
 
Regarded as their 'bible' by some:
'The Disciplined Trader' and 'Trading in the Zone' both by Mark Douglas. The content relates directly to the psychology/emotions of trading. See reviews at Amazon. Wallace.
 
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