Who has started out with nothing, learned how to trade on their own, and now makes $?

chipmunk · Nov 29, 2008

I don't understand why this is so many people goal..you ae basically swappnig one job for another.

I mean if you trade your own $100,000 and make $100,000 Great.. but isn't it smarter to trade $25 million and make $10 million... $2.5M after commissions?

It seems a lot on here are angry if someone leverages their bizz and trades O.P.M. Why? It's called thinking big.

If you want to stay small, keep working, fine go ahead. But don't call people like Buffet, Soros, Jones, etc who makes tens of millions,hundreds of millions $ in good years.

Joab · Nov 29, 2008

Quote from Trvlwanderer:

3 years solid trading to make 6 figures a year. starting base was 30k. No mentor, no trading job, just a few decent folks with good advice on forums and discussion boards. period.

biggest problem was letting losers kill previous gains. get a grip on that and don't worry about being "wrong" on a trade. Just get out based on your strategy.

What he ^ said only I had 20 years experience in the "Industry" before I actually started day trading full time.

murray t turtle · Nov 29, 2008

Quote from NJ1000:

AGain what is ur defination of price action?

======================
Price action is 50% of TA[technical analysis];
which is the study of price & volume.

Price action means the same thing as price;
a good exercise,[better than a definition] take something liquid like GE,SPY,
write the price every hour, or if you are hard working ,
write price[ college notebook] every 50 or 60 secinds.

Or write price every 7+/ seconds, do that for 10,ooo hours;
trade reasonable size .Read /study Jack Schwager top trading books.

If one has never ran a business;
trading business is tough, but doable.Prepay electric bill, phone bill..................................................................................

Or , like most new traders,you can trade big/greedy as you can, ;
like LEH,BEAR STEARNS, C .................................................LOL.The latter ''advice'' unquote, is especially helpful if you like (90% or 100 percent drawdowns, or FED finding/forcing a buyer for your Co.,LOL

Probaly the most amazing thing in all trading;
the %%% of new, [unwise in position size] traders like Jim Rogers-
doubled his money in buying put[options] then, put it all in market, wiped it all out in 2 years.Amazing new trader pattern

Jim admitted that was unwise;
Jim Rogers started with $600,USD.....................................

ronblack · Nov 29, 2008

Price action, TA, pure guessing, astrology, whatever that is you use doesn't matter, math tells you exactly what you have to do in order to be a succesful trader and that is, over a given evaluation period, your expected return, expected gain, expectacy, or whatever name you assign to this parameter must be positive.

However, if you want to become very wealthy from trading you must be ready to take huge risks in an optimal fashion and again math tells you exactly what to do, it's called the Kelly formula.

Read this paper over and over again until you understand what's in there:

http://www.tradingpatterns.com/Kelly.pdf

Trading is math and if you do not understand math, there is no way to profit. Yes, people like Jim Rogers talk about trading in simple terms for general audiences but behind their success hides a deep understanding of the mathematics involved, although they will never tell you that.
This is because knowing that commodities, for example, will rise in the next year is NOT enough to make money. You can be right about direction and STILL lose money big time. You need a timing model and only math can provide that precision.

Trader KGB · Nov 29, 2008

Quote from ronblack:

You need a timing model and only math can provide that precision.

Excellent hyperbole. Try telling that to the 75+ hedge funds that shut down this year (including the Nobel laureates from LTCM).

indahook · Nov 29, 2008

Quote from austinp:

three to five years of every day, full-time study with nights and weekends thrown in. After 36 to 60 full months, you might have it figured out on your own. No guarantees.

I would have never believed this unless I lived it.

lolatency · Nov 29, 2008

Quote from Trader KGB:

Excellent hyperbole. Try telling that to the 75+ hedge funds that shut down this year (including the Nobel laureates from LTCM).

Well, their models were more or less correct. Didn't they suffer from the hedge fund's equivalent of a bank run, with forced liquidations? I guess their calculations were botched with respect to leverage.

SuperVolatility · Nov 30, 2008

Quote from Dustin:

Considering how many of you are new, you may all enjoy this old gem of a thread from 2001...

<b>my story</b>
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1670

Did you change your name from Kay to Dustin

Dustin · Nov 30, 2008

Quote from SuperVolatility:

Did you change your name from Kay to Dustin

Huh? The name of the thread was "my story" and I did participate a few pages in.

Wayne Gibbous · Nov 30, 2008