Trader Meetups (Part 4)
Posted by Mark on March 15, 2013 at 07:50 | Last modified: July 25, 2013 12:01I recently came across a thread in an option education forum where a beginning student asked for thoughts and experiences of full-time traders. He wanted to know how to bridge the gap from traditional job to trading as a business. You can read the response of an advanced student here and here.
After reading this response, I followed-up with some feedback of my own:
> I have to say that I was rather shocked to read your post. Here’s a very
> important question: are you looking to trade for a living or to trade as a
> hobby?
>
> In my opinion when you graduate, you are ready to start trading real
> money in small size. You will not be ready to trade large or come
> anywhere close to replacing a full-time income. In order to do that,
> you need to do *many* live trades. You should also spend generous
> time backtesting in order to see how trades work and how they may
> be adjusted. While not as valuable as live trades because your
> emotions won’t be involved, I believe backtesting is extremely
> valuable when done properly and a practical way to augment your
> trading experience.
>
> Backtesting, paper trading, and live trading in small size can easily
> take full-time devotion–and by this I do mean at least 40 hours per
> week. This says nothing for additional study/learning about other
> topics like technical analysis, stocks and futures, trading system
> development, money management… this list could go on.
>
> No insult intended but if you don’t feel you have enough to fill
> your time then I believe you just aren’t working hard enough. In
> my opinion, the thousands of hours many traders spend tracking
> trades is the only portal to trading for a living.
>
> If you want to trade as a hobby and make some small change here
> and there then it’s another story altogether.