Quote from Bogie:
What do you all suggest?....I'm 27, self employed and I earn about $150k per year. I'm out in the West Coast and I have the time to trade from my work place. Is it realistic to think i can become a good profitable trader without a mentor or without knowing anyone who trades?
Of course it is realistic. As long as you have realistic expectations! Be patient and learn to minimize risk rather than frantically chasing returns and voilà , results will magically materialize seemingly out of nowhere.
A good mentor can help, but by no means is a necessity. Read a couple good books (depending on your style, for swing trading equities I'd e.g. recommend O'Neill) and re-read them every 6 months. Multiply what you read with your own trading experience. You wrote that you take notes, that's a great way to do it. On top of that, while re-reading once unlocks maybe 20% of the value of a good trading related book, re-reading them 5 times over a period of 2-3 years gets you closer to soaking up 100% of the book's values because your experience grows in the meantime and you are able to absorb new insights that you previously read over and didn't even notice.
Why would you want to work for an institution rather than trade your own money? I don't get it. It's not like they will provide you with any proprietary money making secrets. Yes, they can teach you about discipline and money management, inner workings of different markets (fixed income vs. currency vs precious metals vs energy etc.), dirty tricks and most of all: a job in a big firm over time can get you connected to influential people. Is all this helpful? Yes. It is a necessity. No, not at all.
Think about the following: Why are successful traders leaving institutions every year and starting to trade their own (or third party) money? Clearly there is only so much these people can learn at the firms and earnings possibilities being employed as a trader have a ceiling, albeit a high one.
My suggestion: Keep working your job/company. Keep making those 150k it will give you peace of mind when a draw down hits your trading. Swing trading equities can be done part time, maybe with 2-3 hours each business day and additional homework over the weekends. The less you watch your screen the better for your returns and stomach. Stick with your own capital, be disciplined, compound gains. Compound compound compound! You're young. If you keep your head clear and you are able to accumulate at a steady ROR of 15-25% a year without a major (!) down year you could ~6-fold your capital within 10 years, all this
without taking out-of-this-world risks.
) what i meant is you can not treat this like a 9-5 and hate going to work every day and want the day to be over, if you are counting minutes on the clock here you are doomed to fail.