Internet Monies + Options/Derivatives = Profit?

Wait, so you only work 8 hours a day?

I actually work less than that on some days, and I typically go to the gym in the middle of the day when things slow down. Many other traders work much longer hours or work overnight shits, it all depends on your markets and your firm.
 


I stare at my screens every day for 8 hours a day, have the fastest computers known to man, and have custom written software filtering the market on a continuous basis for opportunities. If you think you can compete with the likes of me with your Schwab account, I would advise you to think again.

Not to be a dick, but some of us work with scanning algo's every single day. I'm by no means saying what you're doing isn't impressive, I'd love to get into it, but as you said yourself the learning curve.

Same process algorithm, different industry is how I look at it. :)

Sidenote, checking into this now - have ~30-35 GHz being unused in my farm right now :P

Edit: Yeah I came off as a dick, heh. <3 u
 
http://elitetrader.com
Browse Educational Materials
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Options-Made-Easy-Profitable-Trading/dp/0131871358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283898273&sr=8-1]Amazon.com: Options Made Easy: Your Guide to Profitable Trading (2nd Edition) (9780131871359): Guy Cohen: Books[/ame]
https://www.thinkorswim.com/tos/displayPage.tos?webpage=paperMoney

All good starting points IMO...book is for newbies but a good read if you're just beginning. I used to trade options, got out because it was too fucking nervewracking and stressful. pretty easy to make bank for 1-2 years tho.
 
As a professional trader, the best advice I could give you guys is to stay away from trading and instead invest in a passive long-term portfolio comprised of low-cost index funds. The learning curve to become a profitable trader is unimaginably steep and every educational resource out there sucks and is put out by snake oil salesmen and con men.
This. @OP: Derivatives are the best way to piss away all your money real fast.
 
If you're gonna get into options/derivatives, Dynamic Hedging by Taleb is worth a look:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Hedging-Managing-Vanilla-Options/dp/0471152803/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1294003167&sr=8-6]Amazon.com: Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options (Wiley Finance) (0723812152803): Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Books[/ame]

(It's not a beginners book at all. But if you can't make sense of it, you probably shouldn't be risking money on options yet.)
 
Pick a strategy and paper trade for 6 months. Swing trading is a good place to start. You will either "get it" and have the right personality for it, or not. Trading is not like IM in the sense that anyone can eventually figure it out, some just faster than others. Trading is a whole 'nother beast. Most people don't have the personality for it at all.

You should also only trade with a tiny fraction of your net worth. If you "need" the money that you'll be trading with AT ALL, you will most likely fail. The money you start trading with should be inconsequential - it should be an amount you could lose tomorrow and not blink an eye. If you're emotionally attached to the money at all, you will fail hard.
 
As a professional trader, the best advice I could give you guys is to stay away from trading and instead invest in a passive long-term portfolio comprised of low-cost index funds. The learning curve to become a profitable trader is unimaginably steep and every educational resource out there sucks and is put out by snake oil salesmen and con men.

In fact, I talked with my firm about the possibility of creating an educational product about equities trading but was told that I couldn't as a result of FINRA (the finance industry's regulating authority) regulations. Thus, the only information out there is written by retail pikers and not by actual legitimate institutional traders.

I stare at my screens every day for 8 hours a day, have the fastest computers known to man, and have custom written software filtering the market on a continuous basis for opportunities. If you think you can compete with the likes of me with your Schwab account, I would advise you to think again.

There is one other key detail you left out - your firm banks by trading OTHER peoples money and not it's own capital.

That being said it's very possible to beat the market. Some people will point to huge mutual funds run by the best and say, "If they can't do it why should anyone else be able to?" and the key reason is simple, size.

An easy IM comparison is if someone gave you $100 a day to spend and get a good ROI you could probably manage to get a decent ROI on that amount of money. If someone gave $10,000,000 a day to spend and get a decent ROI on it, well it would be quite a bit tougher and you couldn't even begin to look at the same type things you did with $100 a day.

One of my favorite Warren Buffet quotes is that if he was only managing $1,000,000 in capital he figures he could get at least 50% return most years.

Don't let not having 8 figures stop you from getting into this kind of stuff. There are trades you can do where you spend $300 and you either loose it all or make x150 times your money. You can't put in even $3,000 into those trades sometimes because the market for what you are buying simply isn't big enough. It's also an arena that even professional traders like Tupacia often can't play because it's simply to "small".

It does share one important concept with IM however though. Plenty of people selling information on how to make millions for $29.97 that should simply be avoided. Also plenty of people that are "traders" that are pretty much sales people trying to always get clients to give them more money to trade.

Plenty of BS all around just like making money on the interwebs. Just remember just like the internet moneis the best advice on the subject is usually free.
 
There is one other key detail you left out - your firm banks by trading OTHER peoples money and not it's own capital.

My firm trades only its own money and has no outside investors. I work for a proprietary trading firm, not a hedge fund or investment bank.
 
There are trades you can do where you spend $300 and you either loose it all or make x150 times your money.

How does that work? I'm a 100% noob to anything doing with stocks/trading etc.. Some of the sites mentioned here suck ass for beginners even though that's their intention.
 
How does that work? I'm a 100% noob to anything doing with stocks/trading etc.. Some of the sites mentioned here suck ass for beginners even though that's their intention.

simple example....you buy 100 stocks at $3/share...they go up to $450...you now have $45,000 in stock. this basically never happens (15000% ROI). the closest example that i can think of is googles IPO @ $85 which then went up to around $600 before coming back down to earth. but can be done with riskier options.
 
if you can make algos for stocks, might as well do something much simpler on the side. sports. less data, lots of money.
 
Algos are fun and works wonder in Emerging markets. Not sure about American and other mature markets though.

When I was in grad school, me and a classmate developed an Algo to track rate of increase or decrease of buy order quantity and sell order quantity and then make quick calls on those.. Quickie Trades. Long as well as Short.. We would pick the most volatile stock, high volume stock, and play on that for days.

Options are Still fun, again in emerging Markets. I mostly do Options now.
My Problem is that Losing no more Hurts, and I increasingly take riskier bets.
 
My firm trades only its own money and has no outside investors. I work for a proprietary trading firm, not a hedge fund or investment bank.

Really? Which one? So all the firm stock holders/partners actively work at the company?

Even the proprietary trading firms I know of have what I would call "outside investors" in the form of equity partners that only show up twice a year and the other actively working partners got them on board for one reason, money.

How does that work? I'm a 100% noob to anything doing with stocks/trading etc.. Some of the sites mentioned here suck ass for beginners even though that's their intention.

Ignore the other answer about buying a stock for $3 and having it go to $450, that's not at all what I was talking about.

A good example would be wayyy out of money options. Say a stock is at $5 and you think that over the next 6 months they are going to go up to $30. You can buy contracts that give you the ability to purchase the stock for $25 anytime in the next 6 months for next to nothing. Most of the time these options will now be worthless for the next 6 months because the stock will never go above $25 - you loose %100 of your money. But if the stock does go above $25 you stand to make a shit ton of money. Much more then if you had just bought the stock for $5.

In my example you can't buy more than $300 in those options because on trades like that because there are only so many people that will take so much risk on the opposite side of that trade.

As far as learning more about that kind of stuff? I can't suggest any resources - I know how it works from tons of study when I did the CFA tests but don't do it myself or anything.
 
i recently lost tons of internet monies by trading the wrong way for a year. -facepalm-

my only advice: develop a strategy and PAPER TRADE with it ONLY until you're making daily profits consistently for weeks. if you're trading but don't have a strategy that works consistently, you'll probably lose your shirt. also, be sure you TRADE WITH THE TREND.

One other thing - trading should be boring as shit. To quote George Soros: "Good investing should be like watching paint dry. If you're having fun, you probably aren't making any money."
 
As a professional trader, the best advice I could give you guys is to stay away from trading and instead invest in a passive long-term portfolio comprised of low-cost index funds. The learning curve to become a profitable trader is unimaginably steep.

this.

paper trade only for a YEAR before trading with real money...