- Joined
- Dec 11, 2001
- Messages
- 671
- Reaction score
- 2
Initially I was offended... free speech... blah blah blah. Then I looked at it from a non-trader perspective and realized that what initially started out as a thread to get different perspectives on various stocks turned into a monologue/trading blog... which is not really the point of SDN.
I'd say I'm definitely one of the better traders on SDN... out of the 5 people who I've seen to be "traders" on SDN
... I think my trading calls have been pretty accurate, but I have to say that this experience did not come easy... I've been trading at least several hours a day over the past 7 years... probably have made in the range of 500-1000 trades over that time. And trading is an extremely difficult discipline... which is why my real job is as a doc, and trading is just a hobby, and it's just money. If anyone thinks they can just waltz in and open a scottrade acct and double your money in a year, I have to say that you WILL GET DESTROYED. 100% certain.... and probably in 10-15 trades you will be down to 30-50% of your initial capital. The market is one of the most efficient devices ever designed to take money from overconfident traders. Emotions will lead you astray, and cause you to buy high (greed), sell low (despair).
My advice is to dabble a little, if you really, really want to trade, do so at first with a paper trading account, then with money you can afford to lose. Scratch that... with 1/10th of the money you can afford to lose, so you can lose it 10 times and learn your lessons the hard way.
I've seen many, many traders fail. I did, then started over again. twice. (Fortunately with not very much money). Fortunately I'm learning alot from a group of fulltime/professional traders who have ~500,000$ to 2 million$ portfolios. Before you say "BS, they are all talk", one easy way to confirm that someone has 500,000$ to play with is to tell them to put a huge bid in for 203k shares on avii at 3.07, which will then appear on the level 2 order book, and move it around. And, yes, they did this. And yes, the best professional traders have accounts this size, and make/lose 10,000$ within minutes. It's quite fascinating, but then you realize... holy crap... trading is a zero-sum game, and I am trading AGAINST people just like this... and then you realize how difficult trading is. I got into trading as a hobby, and I intend to keep it that way. My advice to people getting into it for the first time is... Don't. Buy shares in a nice mutual fund.
And don't quit your day job. I'm not.
ttac
p.s. to the mods... no more real-time trading calls/posts on sdn... I get the point.
I'd say I'm definitely one of the better traders on SDN... out of the 5 people who I've seen to be "traders" on SDN
... I think my trading calls have been pretty accurate, but I have to say that this experience did not come easy... I've been trading at least several hours a day over the past 7 years... probably have made in the range of 500-1000 trades over that time. And trading is an extremely difficult discipline... which is why my real job is as a doc, and trading is just a hobby, and it's just money. If anyone thinks they can just waltz in and open a scottrade acct and double your money in a year, I have to say that you WILL GET DESTROYED. 100% certain.... and probably in 10-15 trades you will be down to 30-50% of your initial capital. The market is one of the most efficient devices ever designed to take money from overconfident traders. Emotions will lead you astray, and cause you to buy high (greed), sell low (despair). My advice is to dabble a little, if you really, really want to trade, do so at first with a paper trading account, then with money you can afford to lose. Scratch that... with 1/10th of the money you can afford to lose, so you can lose it 10 times and learn your lessons the hard way.
I've seen many, many traders fail. I did, then started over again. twice. (Fortunately with not very much money). Fortunately I'm learning alot from a group of fulltime/professional traders who have ~500,000$ to 2 million$ portfolios. Before you say "BS, they are all talk", one easy way to confirm that someone has 500,000$ to play with is to tell them to put a huge bid in for 203k shares on avii at 3.07, which will then appear on the level 2 order book, and move it around. And, yes, they did this. And yes, the best professional traders have accounts this size, and make/lose 10,000$ within minutes. It's quite fascinating, but then you realize... holy crap... trading is a zero-sum game, and I am trading AGAINST people just like this... and then you realize how difficult trading is. I got into trading as a hobby, and I intend to keep it that way. My advice to people getting into it for the first time is... Don't. Buy shares in a nice mutual fund.
And don't quit your day job. I'm not.
ttac
p.s. to the mods... no more real-time trading calls/posts on sdn... I get the point.
