Getting Started What can I make in my first year trading?

We get questions like this one quite often. We find that most aspiring traders don't have a clue as to what to expect from the market. Yet here they are, putting up their money. Most are going to learn the hard way. We have no idea in the world what you can expect to make in your first year of trading, or any other year, for that matter. What we can tell you is that without proper guidance and help, you are probably going to have some very bitter experiences. Why? Because your anticipations are almost completely wrong.

Futures traders, especially beginning traders, often open an account with unrealistic expectations of trading performance. These expectations could be formed by the sales literature for a trading program that emphasizes its profitability, by reports of success stories by top traders or by some brokers within the industry. In all cases, you are rarely made aware of the many other times when performances were considerably worse. In other words, you are a victim of selection bias.

Most advertisers of courses, systems, books, etc., will mislead you into thinking that you just can't lose if you buy what they are selling. We are talking here about hype, major hype - as much as the authorities will allow them to get away with.

Selection bias is a term well known within the social sciences and occurs whenever some undesired screening factor leads to a misrepresentation of a population sample. For example, traders seldom express their losing trades with as much enthusiasm as their winning trades. Consequently, a random selection of letters or phone calls received by a company that sells a trading program often will overstate the proportion of traders who are doing well. Sometimes the cause of the selection bias is not obvious. For instance, let's say that a trader who purchases a very expensive price and charting package is more profitable than another trader without it. The merits of the package seem obvious. Maybe not. It could be that the individual who can afford to purchase the package is better capitalized than the other trader and this is the reason for the better performance.

Starting off your futures and options trading experience with unrealistic expectations inevitably will lead to frustration and disappointment. It's better to face reality now. It will make life as a trader easier down the road. Here are just a few facts to dispel those unrealistic expectations.

  1. More traders lose money than make money. The figures are fuzzy, but it is 80% to 90% (maybe more) who end up losers and leave.
  2. Within the industry, only a small percentage of retail traders are profitable on a consistent basis. Moreover, if you are just starting out, you should expect to incur some loss strictly due to error on your part as you climb up the learning curve. Increased trading knowledge and experience combined with trading strategies that have superior risk/return characteristics can help put the odds of success in your favor. So, it is important to study the markets and educate yourself before trading or, alternatively, you can rely on the support of your broker professional. Another option you may also want to consider is paper trading. It's a viable option because it's a lot cheaper to make a mistake in a fictitious account than a real one.
  3. You will have losing trades. In fact, most of your trades will be losing trades. It is impossible to predict price movements every time. Even when the technical and fundamental factors are in agreement, the market often moves in an unexpected way. This can even happen several times in a row. For this reason, it is always important to make sure that loss is limited on every trade and that you have sufficient trading capital to withstand several losing trades without being taken out of the game.
  4. Don't expect to become financially independent. It's unrealistic to expect a small-sized account, especially one under $5,000, to generate consistent income to replace regular employment. While this may be possible for a very low percentage of traders, it does often require high-risk trading. High-risk trading means that if you are one of the many who lost money, then you probably lost your money very quickly and you may end up owing even more money to the clearing firm. High-risk trading should be avoided, especially by the beginner. Rather, concentrate on low-risk, low-frequency trading and devote appropriate effort to increasing your knowledge and understanding of futures trading.

Keep in mind that, as a beginner the emphasis should be on learning and proceeding slowly. By that, I mean practicing in a paper trading account and confining your trades to those that have low risk. The expectations of huge profit that many beginners start out with may be realized, but only after you invest the requisite time and energy and only after a slow and realistic start.
 
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That 's right, listen to what Bramble says. After all, it is the end of the week. Friday afternoons are not always reliable because the major players are already thinking of the weekend and this has a propensity to fracture the flow of trading. So all can not be serious, give us a break, this is a serious profession, a bit of frivolity at the right time is always welcome.

Very Kind Regards.
 
It is not just this thread but most threads tend to drift towards frivolity after the first few pages, it would have been nice if most of the arguments were funny or logical but what is the point of a thread with so many pages which bare no relevance to the title of the thread.
 
No it is because you think it is a stick of Brighton Rock and instead it is a stick of Dynamite, and must not be tampered with lest you blow yourself up and everybody else around you, Bramble please.
 
Can't answer fully at present as I have a nice pair in front of me which need my attention.

Suffice to say, it is these very fractures in the flow (what we call bifurcations of the space-time lower level matrix order) which provide the astute and vigilant trader with some of the best opportunities of the week.

Just timing my entry now. Back later....
 
Expect to go broke!
TWICE!!
It seems that from my own weak fumblings in the spread betting market and subsequent research that over trading and complete ignorance of risk and money management result mainly in catastophe. The biggest problem most beginer traders face is that the only real way to learn this is the hard way. A bit like high speed impacts with concrete hurt but you didn't realise this until you thought 'I know a quicker way to the ground floor'!
Try to keep caring about your performance, being £2758 in the hole barley seems any different from being £3243 down, but if you could save those losses the money you don't lose will go just as far as the money you make on home run trades.
 
You make it sound as if you believe it would be their money that you'd be "winning", gullible!

Like others here, I make my living that way and I can assure you it's not.

It's not like betting on horses, you know. :)

With statements of this kind all you're really demonstrating is your complete ignorance of how the spread-betting industry works.

Sorry to leap on you yet again, honestly. The _last_ thing I want is yet another tiresome argument about spread-betting, but it's really very, very annoying to the people here who make their living by spread-betting to see such prejudicial, ill-informed and untrue statements casually tossed out to misinform everyone else. It's not your gullibility that concerns me: it's the fact that newbies and others with little experience might actually believe you!

Thank you Roberto, just found this old post of yours. I agree wholeheartedly. I started SBing last August ('06) while still running my business. I earned well on one strategy and lost a bit on another strat, but now, almost a year on, I'm doing well enough to be able to give up my 'day job' as the SB gains have exceeded my salary...
Any newbies reading this, keep at it - the SB companies are not all bad, go on their seminars, read as much as you can (it's mostly free on the web) and don't give up. I spent 5-6 hours every night reading when I first started. GOOD LUCK AND GO FOR IT
 
lol, all this talk of coaching and mentoring

i was thrown infront of 7 screens and a reuters account and told to get on with it
 
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