What do the pros make?

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? Whatever i have learned has come from trial and error, books, seminars, TV, paper trading and real trading. I take notes and try to learn from my mistakes. I have a very strong desire to learn and the persistence to keep at it until i do. I am in my 3rd year since i began diligently working at learning how to trade stock and index options. I asked about the proprietary stuff because if I could make as a trader what i currently do by being self employed; I believe i would take trading in a heart beat but i don't know anything about how big banks and institutions work. Am I better off just trading my own account with my own money? What can I do to teach myself?"
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My suggestions:
1st If your self employed and making $150K at it! Dont give it up.
The fact that your ASKING means your not at that point in your tradeing where it's safe to give up $150K.
2nd. WORD!Carefully anaylze the tools (charts ect) you use to trade with to see if they are really helping you.Bad tools no matter how much you study them will only add to your demise!
Remember not all Charts ect are created equal!Dont assume that just because one tool cost money that it is actually better than another that is free!
3rd. While reading as much as you can get your hands on is good! Keep your reading to only authors that give you the facts (not a lot of their opinons) and allow you to form your own opinon about those facts! That way you find your own tradeing style based on facts.

4th.Since you have a good other income! Dont focus on worknig for someone else! Focus on building up your profits margin.
Because no matter if you work for yourself or someone else the name of the game is profits! Once you've done that and you still want to work for someone else!Atleast you'll have a track record to show them your good!But trust me on this one! The older you get the less you'll want to work for someone else!

5th.Work on being consistant with your monthly profits more than trying to go for very risky one time gains.Because you cant play the game if you get striked out!So work on keeping yourself in the game and gradually increaseing your monthly profits.

6th.LASTLY learn how to read charts like the back of your hand!
Nothing but nothing will increase your profit margin more than knowing how to read charts like the back of your hand.When you get to a point where you know what every chart pattern means it will show in your profits! When you bring in profits that meet or exceed your other $150K income! Than you know you can safely cut the other income loose if you want at that point!
 
I'm not sure i understand what position trade and swing trade mean. Can you please give me a little more detail as to what that is? What is an odd position?
 
Quote from Bogie

I'm not sure i understand what position trade and swing trade mean. Can you please give me a little more detail as to what that is? What is an odd position?
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Position trading or Swing trading is when a trader holds a position in a stock for longer that a day. If a trader only holds a position in a stock for a day or less it's called "day trading"
The word "position" itself means to have a money interest in a stock! Either you have a "short position" or a "long position" in a stock! In other words you got money on the line!
When you say "odd position" I think you referring to an "odd lot"!
A lot is taken to be a 100 shares even round lot. Anything less than 100 shares is an odd lot! It's like having to break a 100 dollars to make change!

Now I got a question for you! How you are trading now?
What tools do you use to trade with?
Are you useing charts to trade with?
Which indicators are you useing?
Are you using a direct access broker?
How many shares do you trade a month?
What's the price range of the stocks you trade?
 
The pay is mostly "production" based. That is the fancy word they use instead of churning. Its all a commission based. The more commissions you generate (higher production) the more you will paid, base and bonus. I would say less than 5% of these guys make money from trading. A lot less than than private professional traders.

I worked in one such firm, one of the biggest on the street. The top guy was paid about 2mill+ on bounes casue he had the highest production every month! The sad part is his clients made nothing.
 
Has anyone started a commodity trading pool? I have a couple of ideas I programmed in easy lanuage and am successfully trading. I have traded actively for about 15 years and have finally learned to stick to a programmed, backtested strategy that has worked for many years and has never had a down year. Does anyone have experience in how to raise funds for a commodity pool?
 
Quote from nidarian:

I worked in one such firm, one of the biggest on the street. The top guy was paid about 2mill+ on bounes casue he had the highest production every month! The sad part is his clients made nothing.

Yes, most of these guys are just salesman. They know jackshit about trading, if they did they would be trading their own money. I met an old friend last year who was a licensed financial advisor, he had never heard of the rule of 72 and did not even have a pension for his retirement! Another guy I knew in Thailand was making 10k a month selling financial products, his previous job was a sheet metalworker. Here in Panama I have met private bankers who have millions to throw around, and they make that by pulling in clients funds and charging huge commissions, all in the name of privacy or should that be secrecy. If you have less than 12 clients I don´t think you even need a license here!
 
Quote from Longhorns:

The really big players, like Stock_Trad3r, can rake in a few dozen dollars a day. On a really big up day, he's been rumored to make as much as $100 dollars!!!

It's been heard that another player named EqtTrdr has put up ridiculous returns. Some sources say his IRA has gone so far as to match the exact return of the S&P over the last 4 years!!!! Could you imagine doing that!!!!

Dude, you've been on a roll lately and this post should be framed. :D

Although you forgot to add an asterisk and mention that stock_turder and EQturder would both have to consider selling in order to actually consider that they have made a trade. :D
 
Quote from Bogie:

How does someone get to be in that position of earning 200k + bonus? Like proprietary, how do you get started in that?

200K plus bonus is not very much most half decent instutiotional brokers get a shit load more then that. One of my clients made money in the hundreds of millions and now has his own large charity. You know for clients on our desk that wasnt a one off t all. Some guys make a killing a lot dont
 
Quote from 4Bucks:

Quote from Bogie

I'm not sure i understand what position trade and swing trade mean. Can you please give me a little more detail as to what that is? What is an odd position?
______________________________________________

Position trading or Swing trading is when a trader holds a position in a stock for longer that a day. If a trader only holds a position in a stock for a day or less it's called "day trading"
The word "position" itself means to have a money interest in a stock! Either you have a "short position" or a "long position" in a stock! In other words you got money on the line!
When you say "odd position" I think you referring to an "odd lot"!
A lot is taken to be a 100 shares even round lot. Anything less than 100 shares is an odd lot! It's like having to break a 100 dollars to make change!

Now I got a question for you! How you are trading now?
What tools do you use to trade with?
Are you useing charts to trade with?
Which indicators are you useing?
Are you using a direct access broker?
How many shares do you trade a month?
What's the price range of the stocks you trade?

I trade threw an online broker optionsxpress. I focus on the housing sector because that's what i know, i'm in real estate. I use price charts, MACD , Stochastic, RSI, Volume. I focus on trading options on the HGX Philadelphia Housing Sector Index.
 
Quote from makloda:

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.
Excellent advice...maintaining your present income and swing trading will allow you to hone your trading skills and reinforce discipline as you are not reliant on profits to maintain your lifestyle. In addition, one of the greatest benefits of all is the ability to compound profits... With your available time horizon and income potential you can amass a tremendous amount of wealth, minimize risk and most importantly enjoy quality of life...
 
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