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One of the best things i did for myself getting into futures is open a TD ToS account, get futures permissions, enable realtime quotes, then papertrade. Papertrade for a loooong time until you are good and ready.
Theres so many reading materials out there, probably more than you could reasonable read given a few years. Find a few good resources, but then apply it everyday with actual trades. Otherwise the book knowledge ends up being too abstract and wont help.
Also paper trading is great for futures, at least if you trade the indices and major commodities. Simulating realistic fills is quite easy and there's lots of liquidity, whereas options trading will be very fake, especially on illiquid contracts.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Many years ago I worked for a very wealthy man who was tighter than 2 coats of paint. He explained. " you pays your money and you takes your chances". Some things are constant throughout time. It is very simply; complex.
When you can comprehend that, please be a guru in Nepal and I promise I will come visit you.
Just was reading through some of your comments and I am glad that this post had meaning for many of you.
For those that are interested in my little journey in life - I am actually really excited about a number of things.
1. I got married and things are great! A wise man once said that "the only thing worse then not being married is being married to the wrong person." I would only add that when you do find the right person your life is so much better.
2. I was able to meet my savings goals the last couple years which gives me alot of confidence that things will be allright in the long run. Being completely out of consumer debt, on track to pay off my house early is something that is relaxing and builds confidence.
3. I quit my job and am focusing on a business startup. Things are looking positive but there is of course no certainty
4. This last year has been by far my most profitable trading year despite making a very limited number of trades and the recent market activity. If there is one thing that I am better at now is looking at the market and seeing what it is doing. Not seeing what i WISH it would do. I think that perspective is gained much easier through swing trading rather then day trading.
I have a much better idea now how little i knew (and still know) about the markets.
I will just add the edit that I put into the original post just now.
The passage of time
If you are like me and got into futures trading as your introduction to the markets I would think LONG and HARD about starting trading by day trading. The first trade I ever did for real money I was in the market for a matter of minutes, had a stress reaction in my body, got out. Repeated process. I was so concerned about having to make money that I was not able to just rationally look at the markets. My story is that I moved from Canada to close to Washington DC and gave myself a 6 month time frame to learn enough about the markets and start trading. I have no doubt that most of you are smarter then I am. But for me I can say without a doubt this was not enough.
The last few years I have swing traded - holding for up to months at at time. There are days that go by where I literally dont bother to check charts I forget I am in a trade. Getting into a trade that is going your way, adding to your winners, giving the market time to do its thing is a incredible learning experience that I wish I had had before trying to day trade.
The reality is that all things of value take time. There is incredible value in the markets, putting yourself in a place where you can learn about the markets over a number of years rather then forcing yourself into a short time frame to have to make money is an experience that now that I am having it I can say with certainty that it is worth it.
When I started, I wanted to learn everything I found, from trend lines to MA's to EW to Harmonic patterns to SUPPLY/DEMAND zones and what not.
I was fascinated with every indicator that I looked at, like a new gf, I would run after it and try to understand it to my fullest capacity.
I also spent time on studying obscure things like Gann, Murrey and even some astro, of course on my own from best methodes I knew.
BUT, after wasting some time, even though I'm relatively new than probably most people here to the trading world and blowing out major chunks of my account, I've come to realisation that I wish I knew before. And that realisation is of only two points, shocking right?
1. Trading is not a game of "tools", it's actually game of psychology. Which you play between you and masses.
2. It hardly matters what "tools" you use, only thing that separates from successful trader from unsuccessful one is trade management. And you can use anything for that, from hard fast indicators or magic numbers or random lines, as long as you know how to, you will do well
Learning will continue, well hopefully I'll also get some real money in process
I wish I had realized that there are all different forms of speculation and you don't only have to trade a certain way with a certain instrument just because that is what everyone else is doing or what you have read about.
One of the greatest speculations of all time is Peter Thiel's $500,000 to a billion+ investment in Facebook.
If anything you should make a list of the most popular forms of speculation right now and basically do something else.
The minority game and El Farol Bar problem illustrate this type of thinking quite nicely.
I am looking at both weekly and daily charts. But I think that if you are planning to hold a trade for months you should have an idea of what the fundamental drivers of the market are doing and then just using charts to find the technical spots to enter.