brownsfan019

And what if they are self taught and do not want to turn over their work for nothing in return? A little devil's advocate here. A good thread and interesting ideas but in the end, it's a rather difficult proposition for all parties. Would I mentor/train someone for the right price? Maybe. And that's a big maybe.

Let me preface by saying that I was a stockbroker for 4.5 years prior to making the move to full-time trading. I believe that experience was vital to my survival as a full-time trader. How did you find the initial stages of your learning curve? (not from the perspective of trading skills, but its affect on your life) Initially it was rather easy for me - either I was going in 100% or I was not going to do it. 100% meant up early, study/learn and to bed late. Just as I did as a rookie broker. Up before the sun and to bed long after the sun had set. how did you balance your life? In the beginning, it was all about trading and that's it. Mon-Fri was all markets, all the time. Weekends were meant to take a breather, but much study was done there as well. how many hours did you put in every day? Too many too count. Again, up early and to bed late with breaks for food in between. That's about it. How do you find balancing your life today? - surely it is much easier to go snowboarding in the alps or to take loved ones out to luxury dinner when your actually making money. Much easier today as I know what I am doing now and can do it rather easily. I've actually been considering taking a few trades (or just one) in the AM and done for the day. Just trade heavier on the amount of contracts and the net $ result is the same or better vs. trading all day. It seems very counterintuitive to work for 1-2 hours and make your goal, but it is possible if you can size up. How do you find balancing your life? Now, it's easy and fun. Plenty of time to do other stuff and enjoy the hard work that was initially spent to get to this point. What are you finding most difficult? As mentioned above, getting my arms around that it might be better and easier for me to trade a couple trades in the AM and be done. Shut the computer down and walk away. As I examine my results closer and look at the numbers, I'm starting to see a pattern that my best trades are in the AM (when the market is usually moving) and that it's too easy to give $ back later in the day - either due to lack of market movements and/or my wanting to trade for the sake of trading. How many hours are you putting in every day? Currently a 7am - 415pm EST type day, but that may be changing in the near future to something like 7am - 9am (if that). ================== Comments... It's important that you realize how much time, energy and money was spent for me to get to this point. We are talking about COUNTLESS hours. As I said, it really helped being a stockbroker prior to this b/c I think it provided the work framework that is needed in the beginning. As a stockbroker, I worked AT LEAST 6 days a week and most were from sun rise to late at night. So I was mentally prepared for doing that again w/ trading. I had seen what hours and hours of hard work can do so doing it again was a bit easier the 2nd time around. And now, it's nice. Very similar to being a broker - there was a saying at the firm I was at that you are drastically underpaid in the beginning and drastically overpaid the rest of your career (assuming you survive and are there to collect). Trading is very similar IMO - you not only can make no money, it can cost you the money you do have to learn this skill. If it was easy, everyone would do it. I think you'll find most well paid careers are like that - takes quite a bit of determination and persistence to get there (and few will ever get there) but the ones that can stick it out can make a nice living. I'm reminded of one other saying we had at the firm - the guys that did make it and were making buckets of money all pretty much said the same thing... "I was too dumb to quit."

I posted this in the premium area, but thought it could be useful to the general population... Played in a local tournament tonight sponsored by some bars in the area. A very casual tourney. Key hand for me: In small blind raise to 3000 with JJ (blinds at 400/800). I always seem to get burned with JJ so I put a hefty raise in after 1 limper (big stack) and the big blind to act. Everyone called and 3 of us to the flop, which comes 456 rainbow. I lead out with a nice bet and the button comes over top of me. The board doesn't scare me outside of a set, but I push and after thinking and thinking, the button calls. Right now the chip leader is going to be set after this hand. While the button was big stack, I was in a nice position at 2nd big stack so my all-in in essence put him all-in as there was not much left should he lose. So he makes a huge call with 22 and a gut shot to the 3. I feel good. :rofl: My pocket J's may actually hold up for me one time.... Turn is a blank. Currently a 86% or so favorite to win. River is a 3 which just happens to give the 22 a 2-6 straight. Talk about being pissed. And to make matters worse, the guy didn't say a word like - sorry, bad suck out, etc. etc. - just played it like nothing. Yes, it was a casual tourney but at this point the ones left were playing seriously and to make a call for just about all your chips with 22 is rather ballsy considering: 1) I raised preflop pretty hefty. FIRST time I made a big preflop raise indicating some nice strength here. I actually expected everyone to fold since it was a larger than standard 3x BB raise. 2) I come over top of his raise after the flop, once again saying - I'm feeling pretty damn good. Get the hell out of my pot. Bad beat, just thankful no huge money was actually at risk. Once again, good ole JJ failed me again. They look so pretty though. LOL ==================== This actually leads me to the correlation over to the trading side of things - I think I enjoy trading more than poker b/c there is no element of luck in trading. Either you are right or you are wrong. Maybe there's an occasional, random thing that happens to work out for you (exchange outage or something) but in the every day life as a trader, there is no luck. It's cut and dry - either you are right or you are wrong. You do not get rivered in the markets. You do not have some donkey calling a big raise with 22 and catching a gut shot straight on the river in the markets. The markets are extremely fair day in and day out - they tell you sooner or later whether you are right or wrong. No grey area here - either there's money coming into your account or flowing out. That's it. And that my friends is why I enjoy trading more than poker. Trading is like math in the sense that it's right all the time, just a matter of it you are right with it. In poker, the math is helpful, but luck does play a role (and sometimes pretty big). For me, that's a bitter pill to swallow as there's no reason for JJ to lose to 22 IMO with 1 card to come. IMO it just should not happen b/c I'm used to being in the markets where you learn fairly easily if you are right or wrong. So if you have a rough day in the markets, just remember that you were simply wrong that one day. You did not get unlucky or rivered, you simply were not on the correct side that day. Everyone has losing days in the markets. Just part of the business. On the flip side - when you are right, you will be paid accordingly and will not get a surprise river suck out and lose, as you can easily find in poker.

Played in a local tournament tonight sponsored by some bars in the area. A very casual tourney. Key hand for me: In small blind raise to 3000 with JJ (blinds at 400/800). I always seem to get burned with JJ so I put a hefty raise in after 1 limper (big stack) and the big blind to act. Everyone called and 3 of us to the flop, which comes 456 rainbow. I lead out with a nice bet and the button comes over top of me. The board doesn't scare me outside of a set, but I push and after thinking and thinking, the button calls. Right now the chip leader is going to be set after this hand. While the button was big stack, I was in a nice position at 2nd big stack so my all-in in essence put him all-in as there was not much left should he lose. So he makes a huge call with 22 and a gut shot to the 3. I feel good. :rofl: My pocket J's may actually hold up for me one time.... Turn is a blank. Currently a 86% or so favorite to win. River is a 3 which just happens to give the 22 a 2-6 straight. Talk about being pissed. And to make matters worse, the guy didn't say a word like - sorry, bad suck out, etc. etc. - just played it like nothing. Yes, it was a casual tourney but at this point the ones left were playing seriously and to make a call for just about all your chips with 22 is rather ballsy considering: 1) I raised preflop pretty hefty. FIRST time I made a big preflop raise indicating some nice strength here. I actually expected everyone to fold since it was a larger than standard 3x BB raise. 2) I come over top of his raise after the flop, once again saying - I'm feeling pretty damn good. Get the hell out of my pot. Bad beat, just thankful no huge money was actually at risk. Once again, good ole JJ failed me again. They look so pretty though. LOL ============================= This actually leads me to the correlation over to the trading side of things - I think I enjoy trading more than poker b/c there is no element of luck in trading. Either you are right or you are wrong. Maybe there's an occasional, random thing that happens to work out for you (exchange outage or something) but in the every day life as a trader, there is no luck. It's cut and dry - either you are right or you are wrong. You do not get rivered in the markets. You do not have some donkey calling a big raise with 22 and catching a gut shot straight on the river in the markets. The markets are extremely fair day in and day out - they tell you sooner or later whether you are right or wrong. No grey area here - either there's money coming into your account or flowing out. That's it. And that my friends is why I enjoy trading more than poker. Trading is like math in the sense that it's right all the time, just a matter of it you are right with it. In poker, the math is helpful, but luck does play a role (and sometimes pretty big). For me, that's a bitter pill to swallow as there's no reason for JJ to lose to 22 IMO with 1 card to come. IMO it just should not happen b/c I'm used to being in the markets where you learn fairly easily if you are right or wrong. So if you have a rough day in the markets, just remember that you were simply wrong that one day. You did not get unlucky or rivered, you simply were not on the correct side that day. Everyone has losing days in the markets. Just part of the business. On the flip side - when you are right, you will be paid accordingly and will not get a surprise river suck out and lose, as you can easily find in poker.

Good thread Steve, thanks for sharing. Much easier to do it here vs. ET.

Depends on how probing you want to be. If you are not bashful, I'd flat out ask how he trades and see what he says. And if you want to take it to the next level (and you are able to) I would ask what it would take to work with him in some capacity. And if that's too straight forward for you, I would ask what he'd recommend to someone that is newer to trading and how to get in the game. Are there any specific books or websites me might recommend?

Does the demo act like live trading identically? No. I personally have not had any issues. FS has outlined a few things and in particular something I was not aware of with bracket orders and leverage. I'll see if I can't get a response from OEC to post in the thread, but that won't happen till the new work week.

I put the attachment together awhile back when someone else had asked this question. Take a look and start building your library! Amazon.pdf

FYI - this thread is TWO YEARS old. My guess is that James' setup now is a little different. Actually, based on what he has posted RECENTLY I would almost guarantee it's different then this post that is TWO YEARS OLD. Maybe focus on RECENT threads James has posted in, such as here or here.

^^^^ Look one post up Brad ^^^^

Here's a very easy way around the 'did my order get hit thing' when using a sim like OEC or Ninja where it's basically a MIT order - just place your order 1 tick above/below where you actually want to get in. Example: you want to buy the ES at 1289.00. Well, put your buy order at 1288.75. If it touches 88.75, your 89.00 order would have filled in real-time. In this thread I talk about it more.

Why not just post it here for all to see? Why the mysterious email?

And this post proves that there are many ways to trade.

Wow. $400 margins. OEC has $500 margins, so I guess not that big of a difference. Do people actually trade the mini's w/ a $400 or $500 'cushion'? Seems awfully foolish even if you are good as there will be losing trades in there... Oh well, good luck to the OP.

Great question. I view a trending day as one where it heads in one direction and keeps going in that direction for most/all of the day. Here's a trend day example in my eyes: Take that same day and through up some basic MAs: Same MA's but different day: IMO in the beginning you have a decision to make - do you want to find and ride when trends appear (like above) or trade reversals. From there, you can decide what to look at closer. Trends are easy to trade with MAs. Reversals are easy to trade w/ some oscillators, candle patterns, etc.

And this thread right here on TL might be one to take a look at as well. The OP is here, so you can interact w/ him.

Regardless of what anyone here can suggest, NOTHING WORKS ALL THE TIME. You will have good and bad days, no matter what methods you are following. But this is part of the learning curve you are going through. One bad day easily means try something else. I can't stress enough - you WILL have LOSING days and plenty of them. Sounds easy to accept, I know. Harder to do in practice though. With that said, as new of a trader as you are, you need to test a few different things and see how it goes. The biggest issue I think you'll encounter is trend vs. non-trend days. For example, moving averages can work beautifully on a trend day and slaughtered on a non-trend day. Reversal patterns are great in non-trend day and slaughtered in a trend day. But we know one thing ... non-trend days are more likely vs. trending days. Trending days show up approx 20% of the time. So in theory... a reversal trading system should make money over time but you have to minimize the impacts of a trending day. If you like the reversal idea, then candlesticks are a great place to start. Check out my little area for some more info.

For me, edge as applied to trading is something that separates the winners from the losers. Since I trade futures and they are a zero sum game, there's always winners and losers. Your edge is what puts you into 1 of the 2 groups. As for what the edge is, as the above post says, it can be anything from indicators, tape reading, support/resistance, money management, risk management, etc etc. IMO the real edge is HOW a trader uses whatever tools they have at their disposal to make money. It's amazing how you can present the same chart to 10 traders and get 10 different views on how to trade it. That's the beauty of the markets, some will be right, some will be wrong; the edge goes to those that can be right more than they are wrong.

At one point GF was running ads showing margin as little as $300/ct and that completely turned me off. A broker that is using low margins to push product is one that is just out for a quick commission and then find new prey IMO. Open ECry has a nice platform that is FREE along with FREE data, so at least check it out.

My first consult is w/ the guy Rob recommended.

All OEC fs.

That'd be nice. But I could never rely 100% on a program (at first anyways). I'd be monitoring all activity for sure.

Entry/exits.

I'm going to have a phone consultation w/ a programmer to get an idea if we can put some ideas into action and was looking for some ideas of questions to ask, what to look for etc. Thanks for any help!

Check out this post for a response I gave w/ a similar situation.