What kind of Training did everyone do when they Started Day Trading

I am finding your advice extremely helpful.

I know that you have to get a lot of trades behind you, but you have to at least have a hint of a reason to take that trade in the first place.

It seems that the strategy mentioned is as close to real time assessment of the market in order to predict a future move as you can get, i.e. one stock moving, so certain others are logical candidates to follow suit.

Until tape-reading skills are developed, there is something to work with. T/A, etc. is too confusing, (for me anyway).

The suggestion of "just go for it" feels too much like launching off a 30ft. diving board, with no idea if there's any water in the pool or not!

'Map of the Markets', on the Smartmoney website looked interesting.

All, of course, IMHO!
 
Hello:

I'm a college student who's learning how to invest one day at a time. I started working with a few stocks about 3 years ago. If you would like to learn about investing the web has alot of info and its a great place to start. Books and Mags are another good place to pic up tips and info. CNBC and bloomberg on T.V. have alot of good stuff too. Chat rooms are another place to find people to help you along your way. "not all chat rooms are the same, some are really good while other are NOT" it will take time for you to find one you like. Hint send away for Ivestors Business Daliy, 2 free weeks and you don't have to sign up. Another hint if you send away for Meta stock demo CD they will send you Active Trader free for a few mths. And to your question about day-traders and training? humm, I sure some have MBA's while others never got out of high school? some go to every training event while other have never gone to one. Day trading is very hard! And most people don't last, thats the truth. I do it to learn and have fun, not to make money. I invest to make money not trade. Some can and do make alot of money trading, I'm not one of those people yet. Alot of hard work,training,and capital are needed to be a good day-trader. good luck "may the market be with you".
Hint -before risking any real money try paper trading on-line with a broker.
Its free most of the time. If you have any more questions let me know.
 
All I did was make sure I did my first trade within the first hour of starting. Best way to learn is on the job, using OPM.

I always post months after the question is asked.
 
Originally posted by ANCHOR
rtharp.

Just a quick question,

"It took me over 2 years but I am now a graduate of IITM's master trader program"

How much money did this cost you? Are all of these classes done independently?

Wondering
More...

On IITM well because of who I'm related to my costs are a lot less than other traders.

Everything I attended at IITM was done over a few year timespan.

Ok on to Part 3
 
OK Part 3

Sorry it took so long to reply and add the next parts but posts of this length take time.


OK So I've been in the pit and got a feel for futures. I had a stock account and a futures account. Since I now had some futures experience I started to trade my own account.

My goal was to grow on my own. So I worked little part time/full time low wage jobs while I learned to swing/position trade.

I started an futures account with only $4000. DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!

Amazing will all my training so far I was able to last for over 7 months on that account before blowing out.

I was lucky and was able to get long some cattle futures when mad cow disease scare in Europe came out. I was smart enought to pyramid my profits and hold on for the ride.

Lack of capital /experience though finally took me out of the game for awhile.

I continued to stash away all the cash I could so that someday I could eventually trade.


On another note I started to really work on myself inside my head. This was one of the areas my father tends to excel in well when he works with traders. Your beliefs are what you will trade. I had a ton of crap in my head that I had to remove.

Usually when I see a potential trader I can now size them up really fast by how they act, and from some of their general beliefs.

Would the readers of this thread believe that I used to be very quiet.??

I wouldn't say more than 2 or 3 words ever at a time......usually yes, no , I don't know, and so forth.

The first real time I ever started to remove crap from my head I discovered that I had made a unconscious decision to not speak unless it's important.

The story. Well growing up I used to have a huge overbite that came from sucking my thumb while I my teeth were growing in. This overbite wouldn't allow me to close my lips properly so I had a speech impediment.

Now of course I've had braces and this has been fixed but there is more.

My mother is a teacher for Pre -K kids, but she is also a speech therapist. (Think you can see where this is going.)
She used to correct me like crazy when I talked. Finally one time she corrected me about 8 different times in one sentence and I blew up. I had a fit over this that she wasn't even listening to me and just listening to my way of talking, not even letting me say what I wanted to say.

Well my blowing up caused her to punish me severly. I made a decision due to that punishment that I was wrong and decided not to talk again unless it's important.

I can go into great detail which I'll do in another thread about psychological issues and so forth.



I decided I need to earn capital faster than what I was earning.
I had a financial background already being on the floor so I figured I might as well become a stock broker since the top tier brokers earn boatloads.

My father suggested not working for Merril Lynch or Morgan Stanley as they charge their customers too much in commissions for my clients to ever really make it as traders. "Why don't you go to a smaller firm?"

This is why I can relate to the movie "Boiler Room" so well. I became a penny stock broker for the piece of cr*p firm in La Jolla. I knew I was selling garbage (hey every single stock we touted get delisted during 99-2000) before the crash!!!. But on the bright side I was paid to take my Series 7 license which came in handy later on when I would discover ECHOtrade.

I wish I could say I learned something as a broker but that movie will teach you exactly what I learned. My morals wouldn't let me stay with a firm like that.

I than got a job with American Express as a financial planner. I needed capital badly so that I could trade and knew that the average income for a financial planner at the firm who had been there for 3 years for $100,000. At least here at American Express I learned a few things such as what's better for a client in "this " situation an IRA, A VEBA, an annunity and so forth. I can now grasp some complex financial planning strategies.

I was trading all this time on my own. I had managed to scrap together about $2500 and within about a year and a half it was over $8500. I was reallly proud of myself. I was returning over 100% a year.

I was position trading breakouts. I would find stocks that were near 52 week highs, see serious volume come in and watch them break out into all new ground. I'd place a trailing stop in the stock. About 60-70% of the breakouts would be stopped out. That's fine no biggie I'd just move on to the next one.

Soon I had a portfolio of stocks that were heavily out performing the market. Since I was stopping out of the losers I had extra capital and I was pyraminding my winners by adding to them. Within a very short time I would have very nice positions in stocks that were doing great. The problem was I can't live off of profits to have my account grow. My account was just too small.

I looked at what I was doing and my goals as a decade goal not a yearly goal. I knew I can achieve what I really want in a decade or 2 just not a year.

A little bit later on my account had grown into over $16,000. I was really proud of myself and knew it wouldn't take too much more time.

At this time my father had looked over my trading records and saw how well I was doing. Since I was a graduate of his programs he would fund me like he did for some of his other graduates so that I could become a money manager.

We decided to start up a company together that I could live off my trading profits and give him a % in return for funding me.

Soon I had about $50,000 he had lent me to trade (the $16,000 was in another account). Within about 3 or 4 months I had grown it to about $70,000 and was really proud of myself.


Than the crash happened. I was getting stopped out left and right over and over and over again. The problem with my system was it happens to be right less than half the time. Now that the market turned due to me being used to multiple losses it took me awhile to figure it out.

I had never been in a bear market and was in need of a few lessons.

Over the next few months I had the capital deplete to about $40,000 from $70,000. I realized something was up now and it's time to change strategies.

Part 4 next........
 
Originally posted by Avalanche
I want to hear more about that photo reading rtharp is talking about. I read a few books on speed reading and they didn't work that well. I still couldn't get that voice in my head to shut up that reads along with you sometimes...how does this differ...your mind just photographs the pages. :-P

So are you also able to easily read/memorize/retain whatever ticker symbols and things like that.

I have traded with guys that could remember price levels or where a stock closed two weeks ago to the penny. I wish I could do that.

So can you recommend the course you took. I still don't belive it will work for me but who knows....it might anyway I want to see if someone is selling it on ebay or something.

Cheers.
More...


It's rather easy. If you take a course they teach you the technique in 5 minutes, but spend the next 3 days proving to you how well you are remembering the info.

It just involves getting into a very relaxed state. State a purpose that you want to get out of the book. You than start scanning a book
Reading the table of contents, the titles, and any bold words as you skim through pages. You than hold the book at your normal reading level and pretend to look past the book as you are quickly flipping through pages usually a page or 2 a second.

Usually you than need to wait 24 hrs as your unconscious mind needs to digest everything. Ask your unconscious 24 hrs later did this book have anything of signifiance. Flip through the pages and find areas you feel pulled through. (The key now is to connect conscious with the unconscious mind) Take notes on these areas and read these pages.

Skim through the book more and if you feel a need to stop at an area read it througly.

It's a rather strange process. I find I can usually only retain about 60% of the info but I can read multiple books fast and gain 10 fold the knowledge. Someone recommended the book that explains the processs in this thread. I'd start with that book.

Usually a course is needed also though unforunately. (It was for me :( )

Robert
 
Learn by trial and erra....so make sure you have the capital and start out small......Remeber, Most daytraders are now back to getting coffey for their new boss and spending lunch time on the chatsite talking about trading.




er
 
Hi - quick question, has anyone tried any of these trading courses? any feedback on what you guys like best in a course, vs what's not good?

http://www.tradersgalleria.com/galleria.site/courses/stt/

It seems that a lot of the trader education/seminar stuff is very expensive... what justifies a 6-8hr video course being worth $800-$2000 ?

wonder how many of you have found things to be worth the high price tags, eg 'where's the gems?'

i personally think all the trading materials/courses should be inexpensive as possible, trading is hard enough without charging a lot for training educational materials.

just wondering .. ideas? what makes for a good course/video, and what should those who produce these materials, work on to be of most value to traders? and why do some of these seminars and the rest, cost so dang much?

i've always been a fan of 'keep it inexpensive and solid, advanced/no fluff', counting on high volume/word of mouth/reputation, to take care of the rest..it's worked great.. to the point of where many have copied our ideas re university/online courses... but I just wonder, when I see many, offering things at high prices, why etc..


ken
 
HI KEN DTU. You probably do not remember me so I will refresh your memory. I ordered your video and 6 month home study back in early 2001 and although the course was being written while i was a student i was promised the complete course. Well by the time my subscription was up only chapter 6 was done. IN OCTOBER 2001you promised to see that i get the rest of the course. LAST TIME i ever heard from you. NOW I know why. INSTEAD OF FULLFILLING PROMISES TO PAID CUSTOMERS you are busy thinking about everything else. Hopefully there are some readers at elite trader that will read this so they will know who they are dealing with before sending any money to you.
.
 
You're still a member, as is everyone at DTU - maybe you misunderstood? .. the course is always being added to, so new materials are available to everyone, yourself included, til all 8 modules are completed ... So, anyone who's signed up is still a full member until I have time to complete all of the course materials. The good news is that new lessons are being added, so the content's fresh. And of course, you're welcome to stay in the course til at least all the modules are completed, Larry, with all the new lessons. The course is ongoing, since the market changes etc, so I add new lessons to keep it fresh.

When I started the live training room, that took a lot of time, as I'm doing all the work myself... Starting the live room (at traders' requests) had me devoting more and more of my time to live realtime training, vs just maintaining the online course as I had done previously; I hope you understand. As I mention on the signup page, "All of Modules 1-4 and most of Modules 5-6 are complete and ready for immediate viewing." Plus, I've added new content to module 7 on scanning as well.

Also, as a side note, there are already hundreds of html pagelengths of content available to members, with downloadable powerpoint worksheets, activities, audio and video clips (see this thumbnail page for what's in the first module alone: http://www.dtu1.com/DTUMod1thumbs.htm ). Many people have copied my online course concept, even the 'university' word, since I began DTU back in '99. I've gotten less than 7 complaints in almost 3 years, with many traders who've joined me.

http://www.daytradinguniversity.com/daytrader.htm
describes how most customers feel, and I'm grateful to all of you who've enjoyed working with me.

It takes a lot to produce all the materials by myself, but hang in there, more is on the way :) Plus, I'm in the process of starting the site with more articles and content from other traders too, so there will be more there for everyone.

Sorry Larry if the new materials aren't being created fast enough for you, I'll work harder to get more done quickly. It's been a bunch o 16hr days the last coupla years, but I hear ya, I need to overdeliver and get even more done... it's on the way.

Making sure I'm doing the best I can for everyone is my goal, so, please let me know what to do to improve as we move forward. I'm always open to ideas, that's what's helped make the site get to where it has, eg you guys tell me, and I almost always do it. I'm sure there's a lot I still have to learn, and improve on myself, I'm always learning new stuff too .. trying to help out.


Good trading,

Ken


Also, I've been writing for Active Trader magazine and even this brand new feature piece on eSignal:
http://www.esignal.com/education/likepro/kcalhoun/default.asp

There's some other good articles there by Bollinger and the other
5 traders who were chosen to be "Trading with the Masters":
http://www.esignal.com/education/default.asp

So, no excuses, but just to let you know, it's been busy, all the writing and production work I've been doing. Hang in there - I appreciate your patience.

While most of these online places have at least a co-worker/co-moderator, every single function at DTU is handled by me: admin/site design/course materials/video production/duplication/live room moderation/emails/password mgmt/mailing/shipping/tech support/answering upwards of 40+ daily trader emails and authoring articles etc. I'm a workaholic. And likely, a bit too uptight. I'm learning to relax a bit more though, hawaii helps (i like the bikinis in waikiki, just don't tell my wife lol). Suggestions?



and, back to topic, I was asking, some of these video courses are $800-$2000.. and I was wondering about feedback from you traders .. eg any you find, that have been really worthwhile? I'm curious .. personally, I'm more a fan of, make things inexpensive, and count on word of mouth and reputation etc to create high volume/widespread access to things.. it worked for me, so I was just trying to get some insight, re why some are so much more expensive, and if so, do you perceive them as being worthwhile?
 
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