royal_victor
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Hi all,
a quick intro of myself to the group. I would appreciate your views, but first things first.
In a nutshell, I am trading on the side at the moment. My regular job which pays the bills and interesting is in research with a trading company, but we are physical traders and not prop traders and given the nature of our business we are natural hedgers in the agri futures market. So I picked up the tricks of the trade since I started, rolling hedges, placing them on the screen or with brokers, covering FX exposure and so forth. Although I am in research, we are a tiny team and I help out on the desk of course. One thing it has taught me is to eliminate the thought about money: to wholly detach myself from monetary aspect of buying or selling a few lots for a colleague who has to hedge and not thinking about the actual money involved. A stark comparison: during my days at university, I briefly traded grain futures. Quite a few sleepless nights I had. Why? (a) I had no idea what I was doing so I now know looking back and (b) my account was ridiculously small compared to my one lot I was sporting.
I always loved the markets, esp. from an analytical point of view. But the fun of course starts when you put money on the line. That I have been doing now for the past half year. With a 20k account and keeping things small, my set-up is quite simple. A little web based window in the corner at work keeps me posted with bid/ask while going after my daily chores. I know at what levels I want to be a buyer, at what a seller, when to stay flat. My preparation I do between 6 and 7AM before the market opens. Same in the evenings. Quick recap whether any news might be relevant to my outlook or position. This is pretty much the way we trade futures in our own market in the office. Throughout the day I keep watching my market, how we are doing. With no bad-ass charting kit at hand, I only follow bid/ask and market depth.
With a small position size I know my risk. Position sizing at 1% of my equity, so I am very comfortable with the exposure. I have my ups and downs and learning from it. Overall my balance is up, so I am not wasting my time. In fact I love it! And absolutely so! To avoid any kind of conflict of interest, I am doing fixed income only (futures that is) which are not related to the nature of our business. And I love the intellectual challenge, learning and understanding their sensitivities to current affairs, macro news etc etc.
Being truthful to myself, I always wanted to be a local, trading my own account not someone else's. (My dream at uni was become an exchange member on the floor, that's before I visited the pits and learned that they were on their way out.)
And that I do now, albeit in a small way and quite impossible to earn a living from it. And in an surprising way, I am glad I got the exposure our commodity market which has taught me a great deal. My day job to keep me afloat. But ultimately, I am hoping to turn this into a professional venture. My current plan is not to change my set-up as I am still learning and to build my my account size both with profits of course but also with windfall gains such as bonus money.
There is no such thing as a quick fortune, so I am patient and want to keep my private venture going for the next few years and then to see whether I should make the jump into trading full time.
I don't want to take costly short cuts but at the same time do not want to waste time either. Where or how would would one strike a balance? If I were to join an arcade for example in a few years down the line, I'd do it for two reasons if I were to do it full time: (a) to get leverage. I'd still be trading my own funds but want some additional backing with some sort of PnL sharing. (b) for banter and exchanging with other traders not to lead a solitary existence (not my thing).
How many turned-pro traders are at prop firms or arcades in their late 30s or early 40s (my age bracket if I keep trading on the side for 5 more years for example)? As far as I am concerned, age does not matter to me. Whether I am 30, 40 or 50 and keep making good money by then. But how do prop trading venues look at it? Or should I jump into the cold water sooner than later?
Your thoughts'd be most welcome.
Thanks,
V
a quick intro of myself to the group. I would appreciate your views, but first things first.
In a nutshell, I am trading on the side at the moment. My regular job which pays the bills and interesting is in research with a trading company, but we are physical traders and not prop traders and given the nature of our business we are natural hedgers in the agri futures market. So I picked up the tricks of the trade since I started, rolling hedges, placing them on the screen or with brokers, covering FX exposure and so forth. Although I am in research, we are a tiny team and I help out on the desk of course. One thing it has taught me is to eliminate the thought about money: to wholly detach myself from monetary aspect of buying or selling a few lots for a colleague who has to hedge and not thinking about the actual money involved. A stark comparison: during my days at university, I briefly traded grain futures. Quite a few sleepless nights I had. Why? (a) I had no idea what I was doing so I now know looking back and (b) my account was ridiculously small compared to my one lot I was sporting.
I always loved the markets, esp. from an analytical point of view. But the fun of course starts when you put money on the line. That I have been doing now for the past half year. With a 20k account and keeping things small, my set-up is quite simple. A little web based window in the corner at work keeps me posted with bid/ask while going after my daily chores. I know at what levels I want to be a buyer, at what a seller, when to stay flat. My preparation I do between 6 and 7AM before the market opens. Same in the evenings. Quick recap whether any news might be relevant to my outlook or position. This is pretty much the way we trade futures in our own market in the office. Throughout the day I keep watching my market, how we are doing. With no bad-ass charting kit at hand, I only follow bid/ask and market depth.
With a small position size I know my risk. Position sizing at 1% of my equity, so I am very comfortable with the exposure. I have my ups and downs and learning from it. Overall my balance is up, so I am not wasting my time. In fact I love it! And absolutely so! To avoid any kind of conflict of interest, I am doing fixed income only (futures that is) which are not related to the nature of our business. And I love the intellectual challenge, learning and understanding their sensitivities to current affairs, macro news etc etc.
Being truthful to myself, I always wanted to be a local, trading my own account not someone else's. (My dream at uni was become an exchange member on the floor, that's before I visited the pits and learned that they were on their way out.)
And that I do now, albeit in a small way and quite impossible to earn a living from it. And in an surprising way, I am glad I got the exposure our commodity market which has taught me a great deal. My day job to keep me afloat. But ultimately, I am hoping to turn this into a professional venture. My current plan is not to change my set-up as I am still learning and to build my my account size both with profits of course but also with windfall gains such as bonus money.
There is no such thing as a quick fortune, so I am patient and want to keep my private venture going for the next few years and then to see whether I should make the jump into trading full time.
I don't want to take costly short cuts but at the same time do not want to waste time either. Where or how would would one strike a balance? If I were to join an arcade for example in a few years down the line, I'd do it for two reasons if I were to do it full time: (a) to get leverage. I'd still be trading my own funds but want some additional backing with some sort of PnL sharing. (b) for banter and exchanging with other traders not to lead a solitary existence (not my thing).
How many turned-pro traders are at prop firms or arcades in their late 30s or early 40s (my age bracket if I keep trading on the side for 5 more years for example)? As far as I am concerned, age does not matter to me. Whether I am 30, 40 or 50 and keep making good money by then. But how do prop trading venues look at it? Or should I jump into the cold water sooner than later?
Your thoughts'd be most welcome.
Thanks,
V
