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I have a very similar story, minus the career in aeronautics, lol, I mean our mutual development of interest in the market and then options. I think we also came to the same logical conclusion, you just cant account for investor psychology and the fear, greed, and anxiety that move as anomalies and unpredictable at that. But remember, over 80% of the market is executed in autotrades now(by big institutions mainly) a lot of people think its what caused the market to slide so much last week plus media frenzy for ratings. Good luck.
My name is Greg and by day I'm an electrical engineer (actually, more of an engineering manager, these days) in the aerospace business. I'm in my 50's and heading for retirement in the next couple of years. I've been fascinated by trading for a while but have very little experience. I'm quite well read in finance topics but don't really have much practical experience in trading or market micro structure.
I'm planning to do a whole bunch of paper trading and am willing to put many hours in. Mostly I'm here to see if I can pick up some practical ideas on some of the basics that I should be practicing. Unfocused practice is simply a waste of time. Up until now, I've only used futures for delta-hedging option swing trades. However, I'm really interested in learning how to scalp / trade intra-day futures, probably starting with /ES.
I'm here because I saw an ad for the Martinez brothers trading education, looked for reviews of that on Reddit and found an old post recommending Big Mike's trading instead.
I'm a refugee from crypto currency markets where I still have most of my assets (that's where my lucky trade a few years ago, buying ethereum, gives me some freedom to look into other markets) in tokensets, because I'd rather have some help in figuring out when to sell.
More recently I found Reddit's wallstreetbets and between there and some Twitter crypto traders I see mention of $es and $cl which refer to futures.
Wsb-inspired options trading has been fun and educational and a market with a schedule has been a nice change from 24 7 crypto mkts.
But it often seems that the biggest changes occur when markets are closed so that motivates me to look into futures.
I'll be honest, I just like fiddling with my phone alot, and this whole trading business seems to be a more compelling game than say polytopia or shattered pixel dungeon. Easy to lose, challenging to win, with built in meaningful incentives and the potential to build real world power if successful.
Not sure how much time I'll spend here--I don't think I have anywhere I can trade futures yet--but I appreciate how this seems to be a positive community, though I do find the hideous trash talking of wsb a big part of the entertainment there.
Attached is what I've been sitting on over the weekend in my wsb-inspired rh account.
And yeah, I'm down about $600 there since I started trading there. And down at least $90k in crypto paper value from ATH, so I have a lot to learn. (Can't post images) (three vxx calls and 1 tqqq put)
Just a heads up to the QA people, any post posted with the app says I have links or images in the post. Had to use web version to get this to go through.
I swear, you can't swing a dead rat around here without hitting an engineer.
Seriously though, welcome Greg! You have something in common with Kevin Davey (former aerospace guy and member here @kevinkdog ). He has written a few books on trading, so maybe you would find some of his writing relatable. His focus is algorithmic trading, but his trading journey is an interesting one. Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems is his first book.
Yeah, us engineers always think that we can "crack the code". The challenge of cracking the code is as attractive to engineers as the money is. I still think that I can do it; I would not be here if I did not believe. But I know that it will be extremely difficult. However, difficult is fun. A long time ago, at university, I met quite a few people who went into engineering basically for the money. They were not very good at engineering and mostly ended up in sales. I went into engineering for the challenge of solving problems and making stuff work. Instead of sales, I ended up building electronics to send to other planets. Having a deep interest and passion is really important to being creative and successful.
I will check out Kevin's stuff, thanks for the pointer. I also have a real interest in algorithmic trading and pretty good coding skills. But I know that I have very little chance of coming up with good algos unless I internalize some knowledge of the markets that can only be gained through human experience.
I learnt to hand chart a few years back and still keep a hand chart of the Aussie SPI, best thing I ever did. It gives great perspective to longer views of the market as the scale does not jump around like on a screen.
I trade swings from a daily chart mostly.
I have just started trading futures after trading stocks and breaking my teeth on index CFDs. I have been using Saxo which is very expensive especially for the micros, great platform and orders can be placed/modified outside market hours which is good where I don't intend to be in front of the computer 5 minutes before open.
I don't know if there are other platforms that allow after hours orders? I did find Ironbeam/Firetip but it's user interface is limited and charting hopeless. I will do more research and post on appropriate topics...