my situation

Hi Guys,

I am a middleaged [about 35] professional who want to start trading and take this job as a full time profession, I dont have any experiance in trading but I am reasonably successful in IT. I have initial investiment of about 50k pounds that I am planning to put for trading.

My constraints are:
1. Limited time for analysis [about 2 hrs every day] at the moment as I have a full time job and I dont want to leave the job till I become reasonably successful by that I mean I earn 50% of what I am earning in current job.
2. I have a reasonable success in general stocks investing and I profited from the downturn but have not done any day trading or spread betting so no experiance at all in trading.

Can you please suggest if fast track part time trading training will help me start getting into trading faster?

Also I went to some trading training seminars but I found them quiet expensive, I know I can read the books and start but I want to know what experiance others have and how they approached the problem or if they can advice me so that I do it differently.

Why is it you want to quit your current job to become a trader?

Hello,

I really hope that you will be successful in this endeavour which is why I am going to say the following.
I do believe that success in trading relies on a combination of several factors that are necessary, three of which are in my opinion essential:
-patience
-dedication
-"greed control"
As you mention, you are in your mid-thirties, so if you mention it because you somehow feel that it is about time for you to get in the game and make some money, then you may find your trading be affected by a lack of composure. Experience is counted in terms of years, and I think you should be ready for that, and accept it.
Now, in terms of dedication, 2 hours per day is going to correlate with the above point. It is much wiser for you to keep your day job, but also understand that 2 hours per day to learn the markets is just not much. There are 24hrs in the day, so unless you are being exploited by your company, I assume you have wife/husband and/or kids. If not, Im sure you can allocate at least a couple hours more.
Finally, by "greed control", I think mainly of your motive to come in the game now. The thing is that you have been investing already, but now you want to trade full-time although you confess having no experience of trading. The only reason you would want to do something you may not even like is money I assume. Money is a mirage, and in this game this will kill you.
I would not want you to burn £50k before you have fully considered the above factors. Too money people have fallen in the same trap already.

Good luck!

dk27 said:

1. Limited time for analysis [about 2 hrs every day] at the moment as I have a full time job and I dont want to leave the job till I become reasonably successful by that I mean I earn 50% of what I am earning in current job.
2. I have a reasonable success in general stocks investing and I profited from the downturn but have not done any day trading or spread betting so no experiance at all in trading.

Can you please suggest if fast track part time trading training will help me start getting into trading faster?

Click to expand...

1. Use this time to learn to trade by reading websites in my signature as well as various books. If you can't trade at work, then learn how to swing trade, placing orders.
2. When you say profited from the downturn, do you mean a lucky punt/gamble on buying because it looked cheap? If so, this strategy will eventually kill your account. You had to be pretty unlucky to lose money if you were long from March 2009. If you mean because you have been long and short at various times, then much more impressive. It takes about 6 months to 2 years to become successful at trading. Most people run out of money before they get that far.

Fast track courses: a symptom of modern day society I'm afraid. You'll just be told everything you can learn FOC. Depends on how much you value your time vs the money you have, I suppose.

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

I want to quit my day job because I want more flexibility like working from home which I think trading will give to me.
I can day trade from my office so I can do trading whole day as such and yes I have wife and childrens etc so Takeing more than 2 hours will be difficult for me but I can manager some days of the week.
Also yes I madem money by remaining long on the stocks that I thought will do better and they did outstandly well and I think it's just because of luck.
More importent question is should I jon some trader training becuase this is my personal thinking that face to face teaching and investing into education is a better start than reading books and trawling thru websites for the info.
I think training will give me head start and then I can sharpen my skills using books and valuable websites like trade2win etc.

What do you guys think?

You have a wife and kids and want to pack in your job to become a trader, at which you have no proper experience? They say that 95 pct of retail traders lose money. Add that all up and what you're proposing is a very big step.

I'm not trying to discourage you as such, but you need to be 110% realistic here.

I don't recommend courses, they're a waste of money. Buy some good trading books ("Trade your way to financial freedom", "Come into my trading room") and start off trading small and re-evaluate after six months.

"... valuable website like trade2win" .... I don't know how valuable this website is to helping you become a successful trader, it's really more a place for people to pretend they know more than they do, why else do you think I'm getting on for 500 posts..

dk27 said:

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

I want to quit my day job because I want more flexibility like working from home which I think trading will give to me.
I can day trade from my office so I can do trading whole day as such and yes I have wife and childrens etc so Takeing more than 2 hours will be difficult for me but I can manager some days of the week.
Also yes I madem money by remaining long on the stocks that I thought will do better and they did outstandly well and I think it's just because of luck.
More importent question is should I jon some trader training becuase this is my personal thinking that face to face teaching and investing into education is a better start than reading books and trawling thru websites for the info.
I think training will give me head start and then I can sharpen my skills using books and valuable websites like trade2win etc.

What do you guys think?

Click to expand...

Training is a grey area as far as Im concerned.
You need to know what kind of education you want first. Do you want to be trained on financial markets fundamentals? Then formal school training is best. Do you want to be trainined on technical market analysis? Then professional certification is best, although most of it comes from individual reading. Do you want to be trained on making money trading? Then spending 6 months with a top trader is best, but is that achievable for you?
Most of what is sold as "training" or "trading courses" out there is a drain. You will lose your money doing that quicker than applying the coin toss strategy on the FTSE.

meanreversion said:

"... valuable website like trade2win" .... I don't know how valuable this website is to helping you become a successful trader, it's really more a place for people to pretend they know more than they do, why else do you think I'm getting on for 500 posts..

Click to expand...

I think a lot of people on trade2win know a lot of stuff - what is questionable is whether they are able to turn their knowledge into profits - a few people just 'know' something but it's wrong, but most people here know stuff that's right and true, but like me just don't get around to or like others end up losing at trading itself

I think a few people on this forum are successful but they probably don't read these posts - they use the forum for different purposes.

@dk27 - the 'middle-aged' tag you give yourself is wrong. You're still young, mate. Middle age starts at 45. (I'm 44 - I might adjust this definition next year).

and re: courses and mentors and all that stuff - you have to be lucky to find a good one, most of them are scams, the only genuine ones I heard of were the Turtle Traders and that sort of Big Brother style stockbroking reality TV series last year. The others one out there where you can just put down your money - hmmm, be very wary. It's true that when you can't do, you teach, and it's not necessary to be a profitable trader to teach someone to trade successfully, but still, there's no end to the parasites and scamsters loitering around to cream off some froth.

If t2w never existed, would you be more/less/same profitability?

Less. I'd be broke as I'd have gone in big at the start without knowing what to do. Through posts on here and various links to other free sites from T2W, I have learnt how to trade profitably without paying a monkey a penny.

dk27 said:

More importent question is should I jon some trader training becuase this is my personal thinking that face to face teaching and investing into education is a better start than reading books and trawling thru websites for the info.

Click to expand...

You don't need to know very much to profit from trading. The problem is knowing what you need to know.

Best bet is to open a small account where you can risk just £1 a point or less, or demo trade and have fun. Through trading, you will learn. It's like riding a bicycle. Someone can show you how to get on and how to pedal but until you do it... and fall off... you will never be able to do the TDF.

Can someone start a poll, "If T2W never existed, would you have made more/less money?"

I think best bet after all the suggestions is to open a spread betting account and start trading. Basics of spread betting can be understood on the same site and once I am bit conversant with trading, I will start reading technical and fundamental analysis books and create my own trading plan and follow it and improve as suggested in other threads.

I think trade2win is very very useful as novice like me get excellent guidance

You should not be thinking of giving up work AT ALL. the vast majority of people never persist long enough to become profitable. What makes you think you are any different.

Start trading as a hobby with a small amount. If you are successful - then think about giving up work. Chances are it will take a couple of years for the lightbulb to switch on after a number of setbacks.

If you start to trade full time then you can NEVER have a serious drawdown, so you have to restrict your size to be safe - which means 50K isn't going to be enough to live on.

So you are going to have to learn how to trade then build up your account to large enough levels in order to have enough money to live on - and because you are trading safely building up the account will take YEARS not weeks.

The brutal reality is you currently have a dream which is based nowhere in reality and to bring it down to earth where you can grab hold of it is going to take a few years of dedication.

Hoggums said:

You should not be thinking of giving up work AT ALL. the vast majority of people never persist long enough to become profitable. What makes you think you are any different.

Start trading as a hobby with a small amount. If you are successful - then think about giving up work. Chances are it will take a couple of years for the lightbulb to switch on after a number of setbacks.

If you start to trade full time then you can NEVER have a serious drawdown, so you have to restrict your size to be safe - which means 50K isn't going to be enough to live on.

So you are going to have to learn how to trade then build up your account to large enough levels in order to have enough money to live on - and because you are trading safely building up the account will take YEARS not weeks.

The brutal reality is you currently have a dream which is based nowhere in reality and to bring it down to earth where you can grab hold of it is going to take a few years of dedication.

Click to expand...

Thanks Hoggums, I wont be leaving my day job till I start earning 50% of my current earning via trading.

dk27 said:

Hi Guys,

I am a middleaged [about 35] professional who want to start trading and take this job as a full time profession, I dont have any experiance in trading but I am reasonably successful in IT. I have initial investiment of about 50k pounds that I am planning to put for trading.

My constraints are:
1. Limited time for analysis [about 2 hrs every day] at the moment as I have a full time job and I dont want to leave the job till I become reasonably successful by that I mean I earn 50% of what I am earning in current job.
2. I have a reasonable success in general stocks investing and I profited from the downturn but have not done any day trading or spread betting so no experiance at all in trading.

Can you please suggest if fast track part time trading training will help me start getting into trading faster?

Also I went to some trading training seminars but I found them quiet expensive, I know I can read the books and start but I want to know what experiance others have and how they approached the problem or if they can advice me so that I do it differently.

Click to expand...

Honest answer? Don't do it. I'm a trader with a pension coming in and this is a hobby for me. I sleep at night.

I know many people on this particular forum don't like them and I've been shot down before for mentioning it, but a mentor may suit you. I am in a similar situation to you, and I found teaching from tradetheeasyway.com and now one-to-one mentoring have helped me enormously. I'm not ripped off (been there) and have excellent support from a teacher who is also a profitable trader. It IS possible for SOME people to trade and teach.

This is all IMO -

Trading courses/education/mentors etc are all a big myth and one of the biggest scams going in this 'industry', STAY AWAY! I dont care if you are James16, fx500 club, greg secker, jacko whoever, whatever, all these people will be all too happy to take your money for very little in return.

You could give any of these people any amount of money and they would not be able to return consistent results solely by trading. They are all marketeers and snake oil salesmen who are in the same industry you want to be in, but are working from a completely different angle.

It is a jungle out there and nobody cares about you or your progress apart from yourself. The only way you are going to make it is to develop a trading strategy all by yourself which you come to have 100% belief in.

For me, it took 4 years of brutal losses and setbacks, and continued development of my strategy to finally start to become consistently profitable.

Now, I see trading as something so simple and straight forward to make good money out of, but to get to this stage you are going to suffer a LOT. It all depends on you if you will be standing at the end of it.

I could tell you my strategy word for word, tell you when to enter exit, where to set stops, basically everything but it wont help you one bit. I truly believe it is something you have to develop yourself.

Treat it like going into any other new industry or starting a new educational degree, you are not going to master it immeadiatly and start to rake it in. It will take years to start to become competent.

Finally, take everything you read on forums with a pinch of salt, I've found most people who post are not consistently profitable traders, but from the way they come across they like to think they are. If you take the opinion of every single person you will fry your brain and end up with severe analysis paralysis.

There are some very useful threads on t2w right now, some of them relate to the value of exits - statistically, position sizing and exits are more important than entries. However, no course will tell you this. You will be taught to look for when the MACD crosses the signal line and open volume is above the 200 day MA blah blah, it's all so much b*ll*cks.

Anyway I guess my point is this, drawing a tenuous analogy.. getting into trading is the easy part, but think about your stop loss... what if it doesn't work, can you go back to your previous job fairly easily? That's more pertinent. You'll need at least 100k trading capital to support you and your family. If you make 20 pct in your first year you should be delighted, and that's just 20k!