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I've been trading equities and derivatives since junior year in high school. I've had a lot of success over the years, some dumb luck and some skill learned from experience. Have never traded with FX though, other than on CNBC million challenge :)
Been trading since high school, officially blew up my account during the summer crash. Went all in on SPY calls right before the close at DOW -400 or so. Next day it plummeted more. That's a bet I'm more than willing to make 9 times out of 10 though
It's brutal trying to make money with a small account, which is why I had to take a stupid amount of risk
My trading accounts blew up four times from the beginning to college graduation (six years). Brutal, but learned to secure gains and only trade money I can lose.
Trading paid for the best vacation of my life... so far.
I've put a lot of thought into this topic recently because I have been jumping in and out of positions. I have never traded FX, and honestly don't want to. I only play in the options market. Seeing as market volatility has been outrageous the past few years, if you can find dirt cheap out of the money contracts, you can either make some nice change from premium fluctuations or hit it big. I currently hold Nov 39 calls for JPM and bought in at .06 per. Should have sold when it hit .46 the other day but I figured Europe would stop being so fucking stupid.
Anyway.....I think most of us want to be active instead of buying just to hold. Just like in poker, it's hard to make money without some decent bankroll. Jumping in and out of trades without substantial capital is impossible because of an outdated Fed regulation (stocks don't need 3 days to clear mmmmkay). I had my face ripped off a few weeks back because I was slow to dump a position on my phone during class right as the market closed.
Either way, if you plan on doing this with the big boys after school, it's good to get your feet wet. I'd rather learn the hard lessons and lose $1,000 out of my pockets instead of a serious trade that will end a career. Anything to keep you tuned in and actively involved with markets is good. Leverage=bad at this point though....
Mine blew up three times. I am now swing trading equities- which is slow - but better returns.
@OP I traded spot fx while in college. I started out discretionary, then turned systematic(which I still do now). I screwed up a few times because I didnt use proper risk management. After I was enlightened, I soon found that managing your risk is all that matters. If I could give you any piece of advice it would be this: learn sound money management, because it will be largely determinant to your degree of success.
I'm a huge fan of equity options day trading. I did okay when I was LT investing, I was up like 20k in 3 months (5%) but it was barely outpacing the market. Then I lost about 70k on silvers futures contracts (really just the 1 big one lol). So I removed my commodities from the mix and stayed in LT until July making back like 5-10k in that quarter but I saw technical signs of a huge failure and pulled out just prior to the recent downturn. I just day traded using technicals and gut and I've made it back to black lo. Day trading isn't that hard if you know some stuff and are good at reading charts.
I trade in college as well frequently. If I am not trading I am at least in the market observing price action. I research new strategies, technologies, and anything else I can get my hands on market related. I tend to swing options but I have day traded spy options. Though I do have to say options are my favorite and I enjoy learning about new option strategies. I've done well but I've also been burnt really bad by them. I've also done well on other equity trades and horrible on others. While the losses do hurt the lessons I learned from them are quite beneficial. I use better money management techniques to protect my capital within my relatively small trading account. It's probably a bad thing I occasionally skip class to trade but hey, it's a hobby.
Can you get away with starting with $500 in an account to play around with? or should I save up more before I throw it into an account and play around?
Depends on the risk and time you're willing to take.
Drop it all on EK, and don't look at it until you hear it in the news.
When you hear it in the news, chances are the move has already been made.....
with $500, trading costs will be at least 1% of your portfolio
Lol.....what a generalized assumption. What are you talking about? Daily costs? Weekly? Annualized? This couldn't be further from the truth. It solely depends on what asset class you trade and your volume.
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