What were your expectations when you started trading?

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orbit23

What were your expectations when you started trading? Did you expect to make a lot of money quick and retire? Were your expectations realistic? What was it like?


Anyways for myself, i've made some money in the bull market just by holding, strongly believed TA was vodoo stuff so i avoided any speculation. Then i found out about trading and i thought it looked so simple(IN HINDSIGHT). I didn't have any insane expectations but i thought hey, i can just make a few EASY trades, buy LOW, sell HIGH, easily double-triple-quadruple my money in a few months, and then just chill out for years to come. Then i found out about leverage.
You can imagine how that went.

What's your story?
 
In the beginning I was expecting about 50% a month. Then reduced to about 30%, then 20%, then 10%.

After almost a decade of trading, now I am expecting 50% annually.
Currently making about 20% annually with minimal drawdown because it's OPM.

Drawdown is less than 1.5%
 
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Didn't have any expectations, it started as a hobby as I was in the military, more about learning "old school" before home computers, 100 shares of just about anything was over $100 for fees. So it was buy and hold, collect dividends. But it was a time where the financials were 100% more true than today's garbage they put out. Any charts back then you hand drew, got good at patterns by hand drawing them for eight years, and even after got real time Futuresource via 6 foot satellite dish in backyard, I continued to make charts for another 11 years, just felt I could read better charting....Biggest mistake was getting real time feed and venturing into commodities and intraday, whole different ballgame to learn about leverage. And when I failed and often, learn all the evils of self. Just easier to trade stocks, more repetitive swings and longer term, plus you have a life, whereas so difficult to learn intraday for me, so much to learn-never ending. Hardest part = acceptance, not how much can be had for me, it is what can be consistently made, which is much less at times of overall market. So skip daily goals, concentrate on minimum drawdowns for me.
 
I started out in 2002-2003 as an investor after reading a few Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch books. After a year of investing I made some profits and thought that this is easy and decided to jump into day trading. Needless to say, I lost money day trading. From 2004 to 2011, I was day trading off and on and failed many times.


Towards the end of 2011, against the warning of all of my family and loved ones, I took the biggest financial risk of my life and decided to put my life savings on the line and go after my dream of becoming a day trader. I was aware of what I was getting into and knew that there’s a good chance that I can go bankrupt. At the time I was single so I was willing to live with any possible outcome of my actions.


In late 2011 when I decided to go full time, I didn’t have any expectations. All I was hoping for was to break even or lose a small amount of money my first year trading full time. I read that 10% of day traders make money and 1% is able to make a living so my expectations are low. I gave myself a 20-25% of being able to make a living in this industry and a 75-80% that I would go bankrupt. These are terrible odds but at the time I told myself that I rather go bankrupt and not give it everything I have to go after my dream. Had I fail I wouldn’t have given up. Even if it takes me the rest of my life I will keep going until I can trade profitability. I have already talked about my experience and what I went through going full time in other posts so I will not get into too much details but in short for the next three years from late 2011 to 2014, I lived like a hermit and spend every waking moment consumed by the stock market.


Things could have went horribly wrong for me but I’m here posting on ET so my big bet paid off. I’m now in my 9th year as a full time day/swing trader and feel that I’m improving as a trader each passing year. I was just a kid with a dream so I thank god/Buddha all the time for giving me the ability to make a living doing what I love so much.
 
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orbit23 said:
What were your expectations when you started trading? Did you expect to make a lot of money quick and retire? Were your expectations realistic? What was it like?


Anyways for myself, i've made some money in the bull market just by holding, strongly believed TA was vodoo stuff so i avoided any speculation. Then i found out about trading and i thought it looked so simple(IN HINDSIGHT). I didn't have any insane expectations but i thought hey, i can just make a few EASY trades, buy LOW, sell HIGH, easily double-triple-quadruple my money in a few months, and then just chill out for years to come. Then i found out about leverage.
You can imagine how that went.

What's your story?
More...
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100% sure TA was not Voodo. 100% sure i prefered SPY?? Why??VOO was cheaper for sure; but all my charts were SPY, so pay up for SPY/Hi fee to management.LOL.
Mostly buy hi + sell HIGHER, QQQ, SPY related +UPRO related ......... [AS far as expectations, I was wrongly, 100% sure IBD founder was not referring to me, when he noted '' new traders/inVestors want to much, with too little work LOL.'' ] Possible to double money in months with UPRO; but keeping it is another thread+ any delusions of chilling out/couch potatoe /lazy is worse than an action addict.At least an action addict knows he may win sometimes; lazy is like insane........................................................................................
 
Completely overblown expectations like nearly everyone else. In general I don't care much for arguments like "everyone else smart is in the game already => you have no chance" and thus I jumped in, because competing is fun. Turned out it was absolutely true that this game is fiercely competitive though.
 
Snuskpelle said:
Completely overblown expectations like nearly everyone else. In general I don't care much for arguments like "everyone else smart is in the game already => you have no chance" and thus I jumped in......
More...
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Stock trading/investing is not a zero sum game @ all;
+ thus I don't care much for that nonsense, also. Most day traders do far worse than random; I did far worse than random my first year= on any time frame. Most investors+ market maker/specialists in stock market+ ETFs/indexes do far better than random..........................................................................................................
 
To become a millionaire in one day ala wallstreet bets. Realized it's better to learn risk management, position sizing and learning how to let profits run and cut loses early. Managing emotions is hard at times but that's why trading pays the big bucks. It's gotten to the point where I don't feel a rush anymore and I feel better about making progress in my trading then having an adrenline rush so I feel like I passed a very important milestone in my personal life as well as trading. Not saying that trading makes you a better person but you can always apply lesson learned in trading to real life and they work quite well imho. I learned that keeping expectations in check is important and i feel blessed when I make more then 1% a day and I just stop trading and teat my self to something nice. I know it's not a lot of money right now but the goal is to trade for the rest of my life so patience is key. I'm already thinking about the porche i'm going to drive on the way to my cabin in Heber, instead of my Pontiac with a broken transmission that I take to Jordanelle every summer as I get drunk on the lake haha.
 
By eight I was fascinated with gambling, the racing forms and deciphering all the numbers, the numbers moving on the tote board kept me fascinated for hours. Then football and comparing rush defenses to rush offenses, the statistics when I didn't even know what statistics were. Then I saw markets. Pages and pages of numbers and symbols, the majority of which were totally undecipherable. By eleven I knew.
Money - couldn't have cared less. Never cared. It was all about the game.
 
When I started more than 10 years ago, I read somewhere and someone reminded me that only 1 in 10 is profitable. I sort of brush it aside. Now, I believe. I know someone who is in the business of setting up and registering new business for clients. She told me, only 1 in a 100 start-up is profitable. Do I give up now? Absolutely not but I do my very best to protect my capital so that I can still be in business.
 
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