Is this really possible?

Pavlec

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Is this really possible to make a living by trading at home?

Is this possible on:
Stocks?
Futures?
Forex?

Is this possible by:
Scalping?
Day Trading?
Swing Trading?
Position Trading?
 
Yes if...

You have a successful trading system...

Which consists of a trading strategy and the trader. Both must be successful to earn a living at trading.

There are many successful trading strategies. The weak link is usually the trader.
 
yes it is possible thats how my dad makes a living and its all from spreadbetting i live in a very nice house because of my dad :) i get up to go to work every morning and he just sits on the sofa all day with his laptop tading and watches his favorite TV programs thats living proof
 
for **** sake yes.
if i said no would it have put you off?
if so then **** off im sick of these threads!
 
yes it is possible thats how my dad makes a living and its all from spreadbetting i live in a very nice house because of my dad :) i get up to go to work every morning and he just sits on the sofa all day with his laptop tading and watches his favorite TV programs thats living proof

lol, I could have written that myself a few years ago!
That's what got me interested in trading.
Id go to work in the morning, and my dad would be in the office drinking coffee playing solitaire on the computer trading £120 per pip in the DOW jones through CMC markets (deal4free at the time)

He turned his initial 8k into about 150k in about 14 months.
He pretty much quit soon after, deciding that it basically down to luck.
He still trades small stakes for fun and curiosity I guess....
 
lol, I could have written that myself a few years ago!
That's what got me interested in trading.
Id go to work in the morning, and my dad would be in the office drinking coffee playing solitaire on the computer trading £120 per pip in the DOW jones through CMC markets (deal4free at the time)

He turned his initial 8k into about 150k in about 14 months.
He pretty much quit soon after, deciding that it basically down to luck.
He still trades small stakes for fun and curiosity I guess....

lol what a small world....so did you end up spreadbetting aswell?
 
lol what a small world....so did you end up spreadbetting aswell?

Well, when he was making loads of money trading, he felt as though he had developed a foolproof, safe way to trade the market.
I opened up my own account with CMC and we traded his method together and made 30 pips or so everyday for months and months.
I was 17 and honestly thought i'd never have to worry about money or work ever again!

The method stopped working and we both gave a chunk of our accounts back.

I decided to carry on to see if I could develop my own methods.

My dad went a different route and found someone online who he felt was a brilliant trader (she was) who my dad traded with in a small MSN chatroom with a few other characters. With her help, he made another boat load of money.

She dissapeared for ages and my dad realised that you cant really just rely on someone to spoonfeed you trades. What happens when they are ill or if they get hit by a bus?
I think he slowly bled a little bit of money trying to trade by himself, but was still WELL up on his initial investment which is when he quit trading 'propper' stakes.
He even went through a period of letting a coin decide whether to long or short it! Total frustration. We've all been there i think! lol

I still trade, but at very small stakes.
My only goal at the moment is to make enough money each week to pay for a few beers on the weekend.
 
The method stopped working and we both gave a chunk of our accounts back.
Hi redart,
Did you (or your dad) ever discover what went wrong? What caused your methodology to work so well one minute and then go pear shaped the next? Was it a change in the market or psychological issues resulting from trading large size . . . ?
Tim.
 
Hi redart,
Did you (or your dad) ever discover what went wrong? What caused your methodology to work so well one minute and then go pear shaped the next? Was it a change in the market or psychological issues resulting from trading large size . . . ?
Tim.

It wasn't to do with size or anything psychological.
I always traded at £1 per point, and my dad always traded at about £120 per point!!
(i remember days where he was up (or down!) over 25k.)

In its simplest terms, it was a system where you would buy one index and short another index at the same time, all based on calculations that he devised and put into an excel spreadsheet.
It would take readings from various indexes from different times of the day according to some of his theories about who moved the market and when and why, which would give us our trade setup.

It worked like clockwork for months and months and months. He'd shout ''now!'' (i was in the next room) and we'd short the dow and long the dax (for example) and within the hour we were 30 pips up on the trade and we'd close it and pack up.
This system accounted for at least half of his 140k(or so) profit.

At some point, it just seemed like the indicies went out of whack. They began to move pip for pip giving no opportunity. And then, when they eventually diverged and we thought we had a valid setup, the indicies carried on diverging for an eternity.

The method wasn't well thought out enough and we didn't really have much in place in terms of 'what if the prices don't come back together again???'. And even if we did have something in place, at some point, it just seemed that every trade was in trouble straight away anyway, and so we would have been stopped out alot.

However, for all I know, his system might be awesome again now!
Funny that he's never had the urge to re-investigate it, thinking about it.

I remember about a year or so after we'd packed that system in, there was a trader here who had his own system that wasn't a million miles off from what i gathered.
I believe his name was 'indexking'????? I remember he had a picture of a monkey for his avatar if my memory serves me correct.
 
It wasn't to do with size or anything psychological.
I always traded at £1 per point, and my dad always traded at about £120 per point!!
(i remember days where he was up (or down!) over 25k.)

In its simplest terms, it was a system where you would buy one index and short another index at the same time, all based on calculations that he devised and put into an excel spreadsheet.
It would take readings from various indexes from different times of the day according to some of his theories about who moved the market and when and why, which would give us our trade setup.

It worked like clockwork for months and months and months. He'd shout ''now!'' (i was in the next room) and we'd short the dow and long the dax (for example) and within the hour we were 30 pips up on the trade and we'd close it and pack up.
This system accounted for at least half of his 140k(or so) profit.

At some point, it just seemed like the indicies went out of whack. They began to move pip for pip giving no opportunity. And then, when they eventually diverged and we thought we had a valid setup, the indicies carried on diverging for an eternity.

The method wasn't well thought out enough and we didn't really have much in place in terms of 'what if the prices don't come back together again???'. And even if we did have something in place, at some point, it just seemed that every trade was in trouble straight away anyway, and so we would have been stopped out alot.

However, for all I know, his system might be awesome again now!
Funny that he's never had the urge to re-investigate it, thinking about it.

I remember about a year or so after we'd packed that system in, there was a trader here who had his own system that wasn't a million miles off from what i gathered.
I believe his name was 'indexking'????? I remember he had a picture of a monkey for his avatar if my memory serves me correct.

Seems like a bit of mechanical trading system - ones which you can program a robot to execute for you. These systems are really attractive because the trader simply allows the robot to do the "work". However, most mechanical systems require the trader to "work" not on the execution, but on constantly fine tuning the system for any given market condition.
 
Yep and goes to show again what I have been trying to say for a long time, systems fail, it is the trader who can continually adapt his trading based on dynamic assessments of the market, can see what is changing in the pattern of what he is seeing and adapt, evolve etc. You dont have to understand why, just spot the changes and adjust along with them?

Is there really such thing as a robust, mechanical system that is fully rigid in its execution that can make a lot of money? Because seriously, how much is that worth in real terms, equivalent to winning the lottery exponentially?
 
Is there really such thing as a robust, mechanical system that is fully rigid in its execution that can make a lot of money? Because seriously, how much is that worth in real terms, equivalent to winning the lottery exponentially?

It depends how you define "a lot". To my mind there really is no "magic formula" that will keep making money throughout the changing market conditions but there are plenty of strategies out there that if you stick to the rules can earn you 10-15% per annum on your capital. This return is enough to get people to invest in you, and the reason that some of the systematic hedge funds have stayed in the market for over 20 years.

So my advice...you're never going to get mega rich playing with your own money, but find a good solid idea and convince people to invest. 2% management fee per year on $100m is not to be sniffed at....(and some of these funds have $30bn+)
 
Yes it is many of us do it. Pick a 1/ONE/UNO system and work at it. Do not hop around because its getting hard. It's to easy to blame the system your using and make excuses. Makes me sick.

My rant over.

Lodian
 
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