I’ve been trading for just over 5 years now with the last 3 or so almost daily. I have made a lot of friends and seen tenfold as many try their hand at this profession only to throw in the towel.

IMHO, the real factor is experience. When you not only know what to do but are able to pull the trigger and do it, you will have reached the level one needs to succeed. How long that takes depends on so many factors. My best advice to anyone who is starting out or has been trading for less than three years is to focus on learning how to trade as opposed to building capital.

Find the passion to continue to learn. It will not be easy, but nothing worth struggling for every is.

Thanks to twitter and chat rooms we see folks who make big trades. That can be any of us once we have gained the knowledge and mindset to do so.

Let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Monk

Thanks though as almost everyone has pretty much suggested Work before Trade.

I agree with Tastylunch.

Fact is, you sadly have to beat commissions failed trades and other expenses, but you cannot take on wrong bet sizes relative to your stake, so you need to save up and paper trade *until* you can trade seriously.

For some reason, many traders, even penny players, think they can start outright with 2-3K accounts, barely qualifying for margin, and succeed while also beating expenses as described above, trading position sizes of no less than 1000 shares a pop, or much more, totaling half or more of their total funds per trade in play, which is silly.

It is hardly exaggerating to say even a PDT account with like $26,000 is under capitalized. I think this issue is a great cause of failure among traders, you have to have enough money to accelerate the grubstake and sustain momentum in growing the account, and making 50 bucks per win is not going to do it, and you cannot get the bigger ones without improper sizing on small accounts, which is an unbalanced risk profile.

Yes, it is theoretically possible to grow a small account gradually and eventually have a 50K+ balance via trading your way to that level, but counting on that is optimistic.

for the person that wants to know about Canadian brokers… I know some things about it because I’m Canadian and have had 3 brokers in the last 7 months.

thinkorswim === is in Canada, bought out by TD but not taking new clients , maybe in the spring.

IB === it what I use and it’s the best in Canada, no RRSP’s though and for penny stocks it gets expensive compared to what I heard others use is Questrade…it’s good and cheap but what about shorts ? will they have any when you want them like IB does ? click the link below and read the review.

off the top of my head I think most of the penny stock trades I done and they are usually around 80 cents to 2.00 cost me about 25.00 35.00 or so., I usually put in $10k but I get the shares to short them with IB, so I don’t care when I made 1000.00 profit if I paid 35.00 or 9.95 in fee’s … I might trade 3 or 4 of these cheapo’s a week, but if you do more maybe IB is not for you.

don’t go with the ROYAL…that place is a joke.

don’t go with iTrade, I lost 3k because of them in the summer ,also …the platforms are expensive and they have half the features etrade has…Scotia bought etrade…and changed the name. plus many other problems.

you will have to search this site below, i think maybe it was tradefreedom that has cheaper trades or questrade…..not sure, read the reviews…

http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/think-or-swim-discount-brokerage-review.htm

You know JohnC, you can build up cash for your portfolio through other means than trading.

Imo 10k is not enough to start trading fulltime. yes you claim not be worried about losing it all which is good, but if you lose your bankroll you will still need another one to trade with later.

If you are so busy, why don’t you cut extraneous expenses and deposit the money into your account instead of taking excessive risk? e.g. cut cable if you don’t watch tv, get rid of a gym membership and work out at home, cut down on high priced food, turn the thermostat down to 68, sell crap you don’t need on ebay, sell your car and take the bus etc etc

paper trade for practice till you more capital,Then once you have sufficient capital you can do what you want.

A lot of very successful traders and investors spend very little money (at least at first).

Excessive risk is excessive risk. Being careful and cutting losses quick certainly helps mitigate problems but that doesn’t change the fact that there is an appropriate amount to risk per trade. Even the best have to allow for the unknowable and random.There’s no other way around it.

There is potentially extreme danger in what you are doing that you will force trades you shouldn’t.

well I hope it works out well for you.

thanks as always, I really liked your answer on position sizing. That’s an aspect most traders don’t utilize well.

FWIW I didn’t like Montreal, It is very very beautiful but man the people there seem to have a grudge against Americans , even the polite ones who know a little french.

I hope that was an isolated set of experiences, but an old roommate of mine who happened to be from there assured me that it was not