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Gotta love it. One smart 14 yr niece you have!!!
Please remember to tell her that your friends in the Internet world think she is a very intelligent person and will do very well in life!
Interestingly ..i got all positive replies till now, rather they say its better than doing regular job n disadvantage is the suddenly everyone wants "TIPs"..hehe
then i have to tell i trade Index Futures, which is very difficult to explain ..so i kinda avoid that..better to give 2-3 blue chip stocks name
I prefer analyst cum trader, since it gives me more satisfaction than trader. Also, the concept of trading is pretty noob here, and once you say that you are an analyst and play around with numbers, people prefer not to ask any more questions
It all depends on what you'd like to do. Do you want to discuss the subject or not?
You certainly don't have to, of course. Some people will be positive and some negative.
This happens with many other careers as well.
On the PBS NewsHour sometimes they interview individuals that have the title
' senior fellow ' . I mean what is that!!!??!!??
Broker: Tradestation/Tradestation, NinjaTrader, FXCM and Tallinex
Trading: ES, CL, EUR/USD, TF
Posts: 173 since Aug 2009
Thanks Given: 105
Thanks Received: 61
sometimes I am open about it and sometimes not. I am not making a living right now as a trader as I am going to school for computer science. I have lots of trading experience and sim trade everyday, log trades, analyze strategies on top of school.
I found that this helped me create a backup plan which took the mental pressure off of trading and supports me in code development. I usually bring the two together (computer science aspect, and financial trading aspect) and say that there is a niche in strategy development for big trading firms. My main intention though is to do trading as a living and maybe do other things for the sake of learning new things, but this is generally how I present it.
I have not noticed as much negative tones. If somebody says "are you making the price of oil go up" I will tell him " can you sell your house in a matter of a second"? I will bring up the liqudity issue as traders are the reason prices are as stable as they are (despite all of the fluctuations). If we did not have traders, we would not have a civilized world.
last, it also has to do with the social mood. Look at Real Estate back in 2005. The social mood was it is a safe and sound and smart way to make a living. They had "power seminars" from everybody on the subject. When you see shows like "Flip this house", it is like Joe Kennedy getting a shoe shine and having the kid talk about stocks. It is near a top! Now we have that Gold Miner Show---maybe Gold is near a major top?? who knows. anyway, back with real estate: Spend more, pay more and you will become more wealthy, etc.. Then, when reality set in and the real estate market collapsed with everything else, people realized something: Nothing is risk free. You have to bet that something will work. Everything has odds. 1 in 10 businesses fail and 95% to 99% of traders lose money, and anybody who bought real estate in a bidding war paid too much.
My friend who lost a lot of money trading in 2000 went into real estate to build houses. He did very well and was building about 25 homes a year for a long time. Then the collapse came in and his business went down because he was overlevereged. Now, he is going back to the very thing he swoar he would never do---trade. He is getting guidance from a very good source. The main thing is that he gets it! Real Estate is just as risky!
I think traders are the Last of the Samurai. Think about how much training a martial artist must train to be one of the top 5% in the world. That is what 5% of the traders do (a club that I am almost about to join:-)
I find it very interesting to see that so many people got negative responses. I do not think I have ever had a negative response. The difference, though, I think is that when people ask "what do you do" I say I am a consultant (which I am - have a full time job doing consulting). But a lot of my friends or people I meet know that I trade and nobody has ever mentioned anything negative about it. The most common response is a mix of "cool" (aka I do not know what that is) or "how do you perform? and can you manage my money?"
I actually find the question "can you manage my money" most surprising. I find it hard to believe that people are willing to fork over hard earned cash to someone just because they said a thing or two about options/futures. lol (i have yet to take anyone's money - waiting until I am consistent enough and making profit regularly).