I remember a day in college where I accompanied my dad on some errand that resulted in us going into the off-hours floor of a local accounting firm. I was interested in possibly getting into accounting and saw a room crowded with desks, saying to him that it seemed they were full of people and couldn't use another. He told me that's not what he saw at all. He said when he looked around he saw a room so in need of people that they could hardly fit the desks in. I saw a business filled up and not needing anybody else. My dad saw it as proof they did. This stuck with me all these years. Perspective.
Something my dad would often say was "You can't kid a kidder". I guess that was his way of saying 'Stop fooling yourself because you're not fooling me'. Search within yourself and when you get into something, do it with purpose, not a whim. This I've carried with me all my life. I have a wide assortment of interests, but in all of them I am obsessive. It's part of my character. When I got into the Tour de France I searched for streams from Europe that showed the entire stages instead of the 1-2 hour recaps on American television. I watched the Giro and Vuelta too. I bought an expensive bicycle and often biked 60-100 miles on a Saturday. I biked up the mountain by Gatlinburg to Clingmans Dome and signed the book. Obsessive.
I've spent the past 20 years working in IT for GM: Programming, troubleshooting, developing. I'm grateful more than I can adequately express how fortune I feel for that opportunity and how it's enabled me 'get ahead in life' when so many others haven't had that sort of opportunity. But now it's time to move on. Suzan and I have been planning to move to the warmth of Florida for over a decade and now it's happening. I'd love to take my job to Florida, but it looks like that's not in the cards. This means I must find other opportunities. One of those that I've contemplated and started becoming obsessed with is trading stocks. But just as my dad would say: 'You can't kid a kidder'. I don't want things candy-coated. I embrace cold, hard evaluation. I know the odds. I take it as a challenge, but I am also cautious and careful. I have no interest in blowing up my account and handing my money to others. Not on a whim. Serious. Careful.
What makes me think I can do it? My persistent obsession is a leg up that most don't have. I enjoy technical analysis. It's what's enabled me to win a fantasy football league two out of the last three years. It's why I enjoy learning about chess. It's why I built a paper baseball game in high school based on real-world statistics. It's the challenge of figuring it out that provides the fuel for enthusiasm. It's like a jigsaw puzzle I want to finish. Obsession is why I was so much better than most at computer games. It's why I know so much about religion, and history, etc.
When my brothers heard about it they strongly discouraged me. 'Want to know how to make a million dollars in the stock market? Start with a billion.'. Cute, really. But discouragement doesn't fuel me one way or another. I have nothing to prove to anybody.
I love money like the next person, but it's not been the driving force of my life. Sure, I'd love to get rich trading, but I don't expect it and it's not the chief reason I want to get into it. My reasons revolve around the twin pillars of intellectual interest and the freedom of working for myself and the peace of mind that not worrying about getting fired provides. Learning something that can provide an income at some point into my retirement years is a distinct lure for me.
And so here I am at the door to this opportunity. Suzan has a fine job and when she sells her house her job alone is sufficient for both of us to pay our bills and still have money left over. I have good money in my 401k (been allocating 20% of my pay towards it the last few years). I have money saved up in my savings account I'll use to start trading with. I'm watching lots of videos and reading books. And so my journey starts at the door.
How does one start this trading thing anyway? I joined a few facebook groups. Most of those on it seem to be new. Part of the requirement of gaining capital is the influx of new suckers. That's one of the lessons I've read. Facebook groups seem to be filled with people with an interest in making the big bucks but haven't read the books and aren't sure how to go about it properly. Not obsessive. Not careful.
YouTube is filled to the brim with guys showing off their fancy cars and massive houses as booty. Almost invariably they have courses they're selling you, and they're rarely cheap. How does one discern which provide quality education? They make it sound like they can guarantee that you too will be soon driving around in fancy cars and massive houses. Considering 95% of traders fail to profit, this is at least a little overblown. Couple that with the very real money they can make on large numbers of subscribers and it's difficult not to conclude that's what the whole show is about.
My real journey began by purchasing the eKindle book of 'How to Day Trade for a Living' (Andrew Aziz). I read through that and learned a lot. He has a follow-up book ('Advanced Techniques in Day Trading'), that I subsequently purchased and am currently about fifty pages into. However, as noted above I am an obsessive person. That means I read the reviews of the top books and often those reviews refer to other books and of course that means I have to buy those too. Purchases of 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator', 'Charting and Technical Analysis', 'New Trader Rich Trader', 'Trading in the Zone', 'Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard', 'Trading within the Box', 'Come into my Trading Room', 'Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom', 'How to Make Money in Stocks', and 'Mastering the Trade' soon followed. A fine start to a respectable library on trading.
Reading 'How to Day Trade for a Living' brought me to the website for the author. He and another guy run this site that appears to have several hundred active day traders, named 'Bear Bull Traders'. Compared to most sites their membership is quite reasonable and they do offer a lifetime membership. Membership includes pre-market analysis each morning by a couple of veterans, including an evaluation of 'Stocks in Play' and looks at members stocks of interest. It also includes chat through the trading day, help for new traders, courses, etc. Seems a pretty decent operation. Not expensive and not advertising Ferrari's and mansions. I do have some hesitation, however. They suggest using Trade Ideas Pro as the scanner, Benzinga for current stock news and alerts, and DAS Trader Pro as the preferred trading system. The three of them are about $400-500/mo. Considering the prior point of 95% of traders failing it seems a bit steep for beginners to shell out before consistency has determined how long a person can stay in the game. The rationales for using them seems reasonable to me, but that's a lot to shell out while money is flowing out mostly in one direction.
It's commonly bandied about that trading takes at least a year to be profitable, and often longer. For someone to accept staying even or losing for a year or more is not easy stuff. One must have deep pockets or being using trading as a side hustle. For someone like me to jump in and put the time in, I think the necessity of spending the extra $400-500/mo. for software may be lost on me as a beginner. As a result what follows are my preliminary plans.
1. Continue to read the books. Reading the most highly-regarded books I'm convinced will more than pay for itself in the long run.
2. Continue to find related content on YouTube. There's no end to people putting out trading videos. Even without paying for any courses a lot of content is available to educate one on trading.
3. Sign up with TD Ameritrade so that I can use their 'thinkorswim' trading system. They offer a virtual trading environment ('paper trading'), for free. While I'm in the pre-live trading stage it makes sense for me to not be shelling out extra money when not necessary.
4. Join a community or two (Bear Bull Traders, and Bullish Bears appear to be my likely joins). I can paper trade while learning using live data and join in on what's going on. When I go live with real trading it should be a seamless transition.
The information I keep hearing is that it's wise to paper trade for 3-6 months before risking real money. My feeling is that the majority of new traders either don't paper trade, and/or don't join trading communities, and/or get impatient with the learning and don't finish the books they bought in favor of jumping in. If I can restrain myself from live trading until I've finished the books and paper traded at least 3+ months I am convinced I will best position myself for a successful foray into trading.
Something my dad would often say was "You can't kid a kidder". I guess that was his way of saying 'Stop fooling yourself because you're not fooling me'. Search within yourself and when you get into something, do it with purpose, not a whim. This I've carried with me all my life. I have a wide assortment of interests, but in all of them I am obsessive. It's part of my character. When I got into the Tour de France I searched for streams from Europe that showed the entire stages instead of the 1-2 hour recaps on American television. I watched the Giro and Vuelta too. I bought an expensive bicycle and often biked 60-100 miles on a Saturday. I biked up the mountain by Gatlinburg to Clingmans Dome and signed the book. Obsessive.
I've spent the past 20 years working in IT for GM: Programming, troubleshooting, developing. I'm grateful more than I can adequately express how fortune I feel for that opportunity and how it's enabled me 'get ahead in life' when so many others haven't had that sort of opportunity. But now it's time to move on. Suzan and I have been planning to move to the warmth of Florida for over a decade and now it's happening. I'd love to take my job to Florida, but it looks like that's not in the cards. This means I must find other opportunities. One of those that I've contemplated and started becoming obsessed with is trading stocks. But just as my dad would say: 'You can't kid a kidder'. I don't want things candy-coated. I embrace cold, hard evaluation. I know the odds. I take it as a challenge, but I am also cautious and careful. I have no interest in blowing up my account and handing my money to others. Not on a whim. Serious. Careful.
What makes me think I can do it? My persistent obsession is a leg up that most don't have. I enjoy technical analysis. It's what's enabled me to win a fantasy football league two out of the last three years. It's why I enjoy learning about chess. It's why I built a paper baseball game in high school based on real-world statistics. It's the challenge of figuring it out that provides the fuel for enthusiasm. It's like a jigsaw puzzle I want to finish. Obsession is why I was so much better than most at computer games. It's why I know so much about religion, and history, etc.
When my brothers heard about it they strongly discouraged me. 'Want to know how to make a million dollars in the stock market? Start with a billion.'. Cute, really. But discouragement doesn't fuel me one way or another. I have nothing to prove to anybody.
I love money like the next person, but it's not been the driving force of my life. Sure, I'd love to get rich trading, but I don't expect it and it's not the chief reason I want to get into it. My reasons revolve around the twin pillars of intellectual interest and the freedom of working for myself and the peace of mind that not worrying about getting fired provides. Learning something that can provide an income at some point into my retirement years is a distinct lure for me.
And so here I am at the door to this opportunity. Suzan has a fine job and when she sells her house her job alone is sufficient for both of us to pay our bills and still have money left over. I have good money in my 401k (been allocating 20% of my pay towards it the last few years). I have money saved up in my savings account I'll use to start trading with. I'm watching lots of videos and reading books. And so my journey starts at the door.
How does one start this trading thing anyway? I joined a few facebook groups. Most of those on it seem to be new. Part of the requirement of gaining capital is the influx of new suckers. That's one of the lessons I've read. Facebook groups seem to be filled with people with an interest in making the big bucks but haven't read the books and aren't sure how to go about it properly. Not obsessive. Not careful.
YouTube is filled to the brim with guys showing off their fancy cars and massive houses as booty. Almost invariably they have courses they're selling you, and they're rarely cheap. How does one discern which provide quality education? They make it sound like they can guarantee that you too will be soon driving around in fancy cars and massive houses. Considering 95% of traders fail to profit, this is at least a little overblown. Couple that with the very real money they can make on large numbers of subscribers and it's difficult not to conclude that's what the whole show is about.
My real journey began by purchasing the eKindle book of 'How to Day Trade for a Living' (Andrew Aziz). I read through that and learned a lot. He has a follow-up book ('Advanced Techniques in Day Trading'), that I subsequently purchased and am currently about fifty pages into. However, as noted above I am an obsessive person. That means I read the reviews of the top books and often those reviews refer to other books and of course that means I have to buy those too. Purchases of 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator', 'Charting and Technical Analysis', 'New Trader Rich Trader', 'Trading in the Zone', 'Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard', 'Trading within the Box', 'Come into my Trading Room', 'Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom', 'How to Make Money in Stocks', and 'Mastering the Trade' soon followed. A fine start to a respectable library on trading.
Reading 'How to Day Trade for a Living' brought me to the website for the author. He and another guy run this site that appears to have several hundred active day traders, named 'Bear Bull Traders'. Compared to most sites their membership is quite reasonable and they do offer a lifetime membership. Membership includes pre-market analysis each morning by a couple of veterans, including an evaluation of 'Stocks in Play' and looks at members stocks of interest. It also includes chat through the trading day, help for new traders, courses, etc. Seems a pretty decent operation. Not expensive and not advertising Ferrari's and mansions. I do have some hesitation, however. They suggest using Trade Ideas Pro as the scanner, Benzinga for current stock news and alerts, and DAS Trader Pro as the preferred trading system. The three of them are about $400-500/mo. Considering the prior point of 95% of traders failing it seems a bit steep for beginners to shell out before consistency has determined how long a person can stay in the game. The rationales for using them seems reasonable to me, but that's a lot to shell out while money is flowing out mostly in one direction.
It's commonly bandied about that trading takes at least a year to be profitable, and often longer. For someone to accept staying even or losing for a year or more is not easy stuff. One must have deep pockets or being using trading as a side hustle. For someone like me to jump in and put the time in, I think the necessity of spending the extra $400-500/mo. for software may be lost on me as a beginner. As a result what follows are my preliminary plans.
1. Continue to read the books. Reading the most highly-regarded books I'm convinced will more than pay for itself in the long run.
2. Continue to find related content on YouTube. There's no end to people putting out trading videos. Even without paying for any courses a lot of content is available to educate one on trading.
3. Sign up with TD Ameritrade so that I can use their 'thinkorswim' trading system. They offer a virtual trading environment ('paper trading'), for free. While I'm in the pre-live trading stage it makes sense for me to not be shelling out extra money when not necessary.
4. Join a community or two (Bear Bull Traders, and Bullish Bears appear to be my likely joins). I can paper trade while learning using live data and join in on what's going on. When I go live with real trading it should be a seamless transition.
The information I keep hearing is that it's wise to paper trade for 3-6 months before risking real money. My feeling is that the majority of new traders either don't paper trade, and/or don't join trading communities, and/or get impatient with the learning and don't finish the books they bought in favor of jumping in. If I can restrain myself from live trading until I've finished the books and paper traded at least 3+ months I am convinced I will best position myself for a successful foray into trading.
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