Who here trades "retail" full time

Quote from StLouisTrader:

Curious who else here at ET trades stocks "retail" full time (no other source of income). I have for the last 2.5 years. Seems like our small subset of the board may have a lot in common if we care to be in touch....
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I Trade equities for a living full time (no other source of income). I have been trading for a living for 16 months. I lost money the first 9 months and have been profitable for the last 7 months. I am net positive after tax now.

I use Fidelity Active Trader Pro w/Wealth Lab. I had a 401K with Fidelity and started using their software and brokerage due to being familiar with them.

I have Tried Teranova using Realtick and went back to Fidelity.
 
amazing how amny people on elite trader started trading after the year 2000. i see few who made it threw from 19997 to now. i've been retail full time since 1990
 
I was with IB awhile ago, pulled out and actually stopped equity trading because of a few problems(not trying to start a broker fight, just a general as to why). Went to Tradestation a year or so ago for data back up for esignal, and started back into equities. Now am taking daytrades daily, mostly EFT's, CSCO, MSFT, and few others I pick off. I've really had no problems with TS for my equity trading, but would always like to find lower commissions with good service. Primarily been smaller scalps, but am trying to add some longer term intraday and position with options thrown in.
 
Quote from joeyata1:

amazing how amny people on elite trader started trading after the year 2000. i see few who made it threw from 19997 to now. i've been retail full time since 1990
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I thought you traded prop.... through Genesis? As far as the number of people who made it from 1997 to now, I'm not arguing it's tough to maintain that kind of consistency. But 8 yrs is a long time for any endeavour. I wouldn't read too much into it.
 
Quote from StLouisTrader:

Curious who else here at ET trades stocks "retail" full time (no other source of income). I have for the last 2.5 years.
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I've been full time for 9+ years ... left my engineering job in early 1996. Saw lots of people blow out in the late 90's .. yeah, before the market tanked. So many people would chase the high flyers and then stubbornly refuse to admit their mistake and not sell. Small losses turned into massive ones. Lack of discipline is what I saw as the reason for most who failed. A few others, who had some good years, eventually washed out when they didn't adapt to the changing markets. A few recommendations:

(1) be disciplined, accept losses
(2) adequately fund your trading account
(3) have a business plan if this is your full time endeavor
(4) adapt to the markets ... can't always hit home runs .. nothing wrong with a bunch of singles
(5) play both sides of the market
 
Quote from Shreddog:

What made you decide to switch back? And who were you trading with, if I may ask?
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I started a hedge fund back in 1998 when they were supposedly "unregulated investment partnerships." While they never really were unregulated, the amount of regulation has increased to the point where I was spending more time on compliance than real work. Of course I could have hired somebody to do that work for some ridiculous amount of money, but I didn't want to be a manager. I just want to speculate and build systems and running a hedge fund is not the way to do it any more (unless you have an ungodly amount of money and can outsource everything).

I use IB. I have an automated system built in Excel. The only choices I know of are IB or a FIX system, but I don't do enough volume to FIX for free (I only trade once a week). But that's not really the subject of this thread....
 
Been trading retail since mid 1999. I started in college (still made it to half my classes) and have been doing it full time since 2000. Never tried Prop.....Never intend to. Last "real" job I had was as a bouncer in a club in college.

good luck to all!
 
95-96 traded at a hedge fund. Full time retail trader since 97. Traded in a retail trading office from 97-03. I know trade from the luxury of my home. Never had any reason to trade prop. Same rates, same software and have enough capital
 
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