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For me being a trader is as much a part of my persona, as my being married and a father of 6. It is not only what I do, or how I earn my living, it is an intrinsic part of who I am. How could I expect to be successful at trading, if I didn’t take pride in what I was doing?
Pride is a precursor to success. Along with confidence, pride is an essential ingredient in a trader’s character development. It’s what gives him his drive to succeed, and it is what sustains him when things aren’t going well. It’s what also allows him to be gracious and share his knowledge, and help others learn how to trade, without feeling diminished.
Pride is not about arrogance, it is all about having faith in oneself. Confidence comes from putting in the required amount of practice, acquiring knowledge and skills, and breeding it with experience. Pride and self-confidence, are both important prerequisites for self-realization, which in turn leads to the emotional fortitude that is required to become a successful trader.
Here are the responses after I say I am a future trader and broker:
1) "Do you trade Pork Bellies or Orange Juice"?
2) "What's a good stock to buy"?
3) "What is that?"
4) "It's hard, right?"
5) "Too Stressful!"
6) Uncle Morty: "once a broker called me in 1976 to buy Gold..."
7) "Do you yell like they show on TV?"
8) "I had a friend who lost all his money trading commodities"
9) "Did you hear of the Hunt brothers?"
10) "Did you learn that in school?"
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
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I agree with @tigertrader, and I do have a lot of pride. I've revealed in other posts on the forum how during the process of becoming a trader I sacrificed a lot of other things in my life, post-divorce, and it has been nothing short of awesome. I found what I really truly am good at and enjoy, I can't imagine doing anything else.
So when I posed the question it wasn't about how you feel based on someone elses reaction. The question was "why" are they reacting this way? I mean we're just talking about casual conversation stuff, getting a hair cut "what do you do?", at a bar meet some new people "what do you do?", that kind of stuff.
Really depends who is asking and how much follow up questioning I think I'll get.
I rarely say day trader, since I'm quite happy that 'trader' covers day trading, and occassionally people react negatively to day trader. I say various other things - IT from home, investor, programming.
I do get rather bored though with - oh, can we have a drink and a chat about that as I'm trying to get into it. I usually just say that they'd be much better off with a book since I can't easily describe what I do.
I get mixed responses. Most of the people that I talk to dont think its a real way to make money. They are locked into their 9 to 5 mentality for 40 years putting money into their 401K. To them its the only way to invest. I tried explaining it a few times but I only get a "deer in the headlights" look or a "cow at a new gate" look. To them if you dont go to a school and get a degree your wasting your time. If there is one school I think we all have gone to is the school of trial by fire. Trading takes alot of screen time and knowing what you are doing. It took me 6 years before I became profitable on a consisant basis. It was worth the effort.
Lets face it, most people are happy with complacency and security. They have a family and just aren't risk takers. They just aren't willing to spend their free time to venture into a business or trading. Plain and simple, their just happy where they are.
Everyone in this forum is in this business for various reasons; they lost their job and can't find another job, they're retired and looking for additional retirement funds or to still be productive in their lives, a full time employee looking to increase their retirement benefits. And then there are some of us who truly love this business and can't see themselves doing anything else for a living.
I also believe that we're in the kind of business some people just don't understand and they may look at traders as another Bernie Madoff which is still fresh in the back of their minds. There are many occupations that the average Joe despises, like politicians, lobbyist, and more common lawyers, hell even most doctors are disliked theses days because of a few bad ones.
I have to agree with tigertrader and be proud of what you do for a living, I know that I am.
6 years is an interesting number because many claim it took them 5-6 years before they became profitable . 10,000 screen hours is another one I see thrown around and I believe both because any business venture potentailly will take tremendous time focus and experience before you produce an income . I was in retail for 15 years while my children were very young and it was a "good" job like we should all have according to "everyone" . During those 15 years I saw 3 companies change hands and many managers / supervisors and above store level folks that commited much of their lives to these companies face major demotions and terminations in the changeover . Point is nothing is guaranteed even a "good" or "secure" job and finally I left and went to work for myself and aligned myself with other self thinkers and do OK for myself and accept that is my total responsibility to take care of me and my own .
So for me trading is additional income and although at first my goal was to trade for a primary source of income Ive come to realize that I enjoy what I do and who I am and trading is a segment of all those things .