What got you in?

I developed a passion for the markets after a school project in the 5th grade.

I started investing at fourteen and made enough money at sixteen (barely) to support myself and left home.

Worked in an electronics distribution warehouse and plowed every penny into stocks and money markets.

Lived in a small studio apt. in a bad part of town. There was a credit union a few blocks away and I would often snag their WSJ:eek:

Made and lost alot of money since then.

Started intraday trading just a few years ago. I still position and swing.

To me everyday is like a treasure hunt and I'm only hindered by self imposed limitations.

I've found that when I absolutely let go and become the market, the rewards are enormous. No hesitation, no second guessing.

Core market knowledge and chart reading are critical for my approach. Human behavior and cycles are important also.

Everyday is a learning opportunity.

As stupid as this sounds, I'd do this even if the money wasn't good.

It's something I love. I think that is the secret.
 
Quote from infolode:



As stupid as this sounds, I'd do this even if the money wasn't good.

It's something I love. I think that is the secret.
More...

Yep. Always fascinated by the idea of "beating" these random movements, much less destroying them , man vs machine if you like, (apologies to any quants) i just love charting.
 
ghetto808


Registered: Jun 2004
Posts: 33


12-20-06 07:01 PM



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Quote from mjh:

I am a retired USAF pilot and always loved how the market worked. Little did I know how little I knew about it!

Happy Holidays to all!

-mjh
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So I've read before that pilots make the best traders. How true is that?

Can't say that is true or untrue, but in my case the discipline I learned in the military has helped greatly.

mjh
 
did Communications in school, but that was a liberal arts form of degree (read: useless piece of paper in the "real world" but completely beneficial in the personal world :D :D )

Bounced around afterward in lower-paying jobs, and got sick of the whole job market/rat race/"we understand but the system won't let us give you what you would like" deal. Never exactly was going to be a model corporate employee...maybe because I can think for myself. :cool:

Work in TV now which is nice, and I love it, but love don't pay the bills :)

Always looked over the markets when younger and checked the news and stock reports.

Finally fell into it recently, when a system I was ready to buy into turned out after some further research to be a sham...funny thing is the guy who blew the whistle on it then later on started his own system...lol. So, I bought into it and it's been working nicely so far. I haven't made a mint yet, but I am profitable and can envision myself doing this for a living after the account gets built up and the debts paid. (trading futures right now)

But as mentioned before, I already know that you can't just have "a job" and expect for everything to work out in the end...just got to go for it and make something happen...rather do that and fail then stay comfortable and not move ahead.

The idea of pulling money out of seemingly thin air...well, that sits nicely with me! :p
 
My degrees are in chemical engineering and MBA. College buddy who was broker introduced me to market back in 1990's. Started trading then, first as scalper, then to day and swing trading.

My job title is self-employed consulting in engineering and business in manufacturing - used to be engineer and manager for years in paper industry.

Trading is my favorite hobby when I'm consulting, and main income source when I'm not consulting.
 
For me, it was the same stupid crap that gets everyone in it.

The introduction to Elder's book "Trading for a Living" sounded so alluring.

I was burnt out working for the man at my IT job....figured it would be easy to make the same amount of $$$ as my own boss trading.

I'm still waiting for that dumptruck full of money to show up....
 
These are all great. It really shows that investors come from all walks of life. Im 28 now and working as a sales person selling computers. In Feb. I am going to be quiting my job and going into day trading full time. I will work 4-5 days a week part time to help pay the bills at the beggining. I swing trade right now and love it. As most of you have talked about, trading as a career seems more rewarding not so for the money, but for the freedom. I love the fact that once I get established I can pretty much work in any city I wish, which makes a big difference when your 28 and ready to get married and settle down with kids. I really dont want to have kids while living in a city. Good stories guys and gals and lets here some more.
 
I had no clue whatsoever about the markets, and I was sitting at a college I was applying for, waiting to be interviewed by some of the tutors. I was applying for a politics, philosophy & economics course (I was mostly interested in the philosophy, and hardly at all by the economics side of it), so while I waited I figured I should read the paper in case they asked about any topical events in the news. As it happened, one of the papers in the business section had a front page article on how George Soros made $1 billion in a day from the ERM currency debacle where the pound sterling collapsed and left the exchange rate mechanism. The article described in depth the situation leading up to the collapse, what economic factors had caused the tension and how it was all resolved, how the Bank of England finally abandoned the peg. At the time I didn't understand most of it, but the idea that someone could analyse that kind of thing, predict it in advance, then bet billions of dollars on it, forcing a nation's central bank to abandon their policy, and make huge sums of money into the bargain was thoroughly fascinating to me.

After that, I read all I could get my hands on relating to markets. One of the first books I found was Market Wizards, and I reread it several times. I got accepted to the college and several people & professors on the course were saying how you can invest in stocks but currencies are totally unpredictable, yet on the other hand I was reading about people who made a living doing exactly that. I found more of the classic investment & trading texts, then took out a student loan to speculate on the stock market. As this was 1995-96, the early part of the 1990s bull market, I did pretty well - I had read a good book about growth stock investing, and selected stocks according to those principles, and my portfolio went up about 65% compared to 20% for the index. I also spent a lot of time testing technical methods (I'd done statistics and one of my friends was taking it as his degree subject, so I could model & test them fairly rigorously).

After that I knew that this was the path for me. I interviewed with a lot of firms (J P Morgan etc) but I found that none of them catered to true speculating/trading, at least not at trainee level, and even the ones doing investing forced pretty strict limits on you. I was a bit disillusioned, and instead applied for entry-level jobs with firms on the futures exchange floors, figuring that was a quicker way to get in and trade as soon as possible. I joined a firm that worked there trading the German bond futures, and would paper trade while clerking, and occasionally do some punts longer-term. Around this time, electronic futures were taking off, and I did some research after hours into this sector. I found what I thought were inefficiencies and after studying some more, started thinking about leaving to trade for myself. I eventually quit, and within a few months I was doing pretty well and didn't look back. And that's how I got into trading.
 
Graduated From U of Iowa. Bounced around and ende up managing parking garages (Subterranean Vehicular Placement).

Was parking a traders car when I asked him what he did.

Begged for an interview at his trading firm.

Begged for a job at the trading firm.

Me telling my boss at the garage on my last day, "You know, I gotta be honest with you. When my friends and I would sit around at the lunch table in high school and talk about what we wanted to be when we grow up, I don't think Garage Manager made my top 50."
 
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