[JayMillz]

I met this guy in Medellin earlier this year and he seemed like a pretty cool dude. This article gives some background about his travels and business.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/201407...e-banker/1

When people first discovered that I had borrowed $25,000 in student loans to fund a new day trading career just out of high school, they thought I was crazy. They certainly assumed I was beyond the point of no return when they heard that I lost the full $25,000 in the first month.
But having moved to the US from Venezuela with nothing when I was young, I knew success was going to require hard work and risks. I was employed full time at a bank while also being a full-time college student – all while learning how to day trade: essentially, make money from buying and selling stocks online.

But my ultimate goal wasn’t fame or fortune. It was freedom.
As long as I can remember, I always wanted to do things differently. For example, I never saw the point of wasting an hour, twice a day, in rush hour traffic getting to and from work. That’s 20 days of sitting in traffic every year. Over 10 years, I would be wasting nearly a full year commuting! Instead, I wanted to be in control of my own time and have my own schedule.

Roughly five years after I began my day trading career, I’ve achieved that freedom. I’ve visited more than 80 countries and lived in 12 of them; I have travelled to all seven continents. I also speak and understand nearly nine languages. The $25,000 plus in loans I took on learning to trade, meanwhile, I paid off years ago.

[Afarang]

nice.

[GyopoPlayboy]

day trading is just a fancy word for gambling. i would never recommend it as a viable path to riches and freedom to any of my friends.

[2014]

it's something all of us would love to do. massive respect to him

[El Chinito loco]

(08-09-2014 03:07 AM)GyopoPlayboy Wrote:  

day trading is just a fancy word for gambling. i would never recommend it as a viable path to riches and freedom to any of my friends.

There really are successful technical pattern traders out there but the skills required are hard to learn and make money from. Aside from having to be disciplined and good at pattern recognition the reason why so few are profitable is because tax eats heavily into your profit too.

I looked into the guy who is mentioned in that article. He runs a daytrading site and is using his travel blog to plug his business. Sounds like he makes lots of money selling his "system" which indicates to me that he's really just a marketer. There's no proof he actually makes money trading and there are a lot of guys out there selling get rich quick systems that are repackaged trading styles or 100% bullshit.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(08-09-2014 12:54 AM)JayMillz Wrote:  

I met this guy in Medellin earlier this year and he seemed like a pretty cool dude. This article gives some background about his travels and business.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/201407...e-banker/1

...
Roughly five years after I began my day trading career, I’ve achieved that freedom. I’ve visited more than 80 countries and lived in 12 of them; I have travelled to all seven continents. I also speak and understand nearly nine languages. The $25,000 plus in loans I took on learning to trade, meanwhile, I paid off years ago.

There are plenty of people who are trading derivatives with success. It has little to do with the daytrading-mania from the tech-bubble. It just means that you cover your position end of day, which is no big deal really.

I disagree however with his message that anyone can become a successful trader. Most likely he already had the right mental frame for trading when he started out - highly logical, little emotional pull, in his case also quite daring when taking risks, high IQ.

In my estimation 95% of people won't be able to make it in the markets on their own - and neither would over 95% of the people already working on Wallstreet. This is not as some people point out erroneously that you "compete" with Wallstreet. No - you compete with yourself, your ego, your lack of discipline, your faulty perceptions of what the market is.

He might very well be able to make money, but his advice will be only useful for a small part of people - 5% might make in theory, in reality only 0,1% will manage it. It would be similar to a professional PUA telling you that everyone can become a Player bedding hundreds of girls and sleeping with models and actresses. Most guys know fully well that this would be dishonest.

Successful Trading is by far more difficult than learning Game and becoming better with women (something that almost all men can do). It is just that to become a Trader you basically have to enter top level Master Player terrain in a very short time and that is simply not realistic. Most guys who succeed do not even know why they can do it when others fail - they have mental predispositions that are "natural" to them - mostly being emotionally distant from trade and in constant risk-control-mode while having learned the encompassing basics.

So yeah - it is not a scam and not impossible, just very unlikely - and you don't have to risk much money nowadays in order to find out whether you are any good at it. Oh - and read those books first in order to save yourself some financial pain:

http://bclund.com/2012/03/13/20-books-ev...ould-know/

The books will give you the basics and also convey to you the necessary psychological make-up necessary for success in that field.

On the other hand it should be no surprise that in order to make a living off it you need to be excellent at it - not everyone can be a writer or even make a living off it like a blogger, not everyone can be a professional athlete or even a Pro-PUA. On a side-note - this guy probably already makes some good change via his blog due to his popularity. The banks need constant influx of new suckers who want to escape the grind and think that Trading is their ticket out. It is not - for any guy like him succeeding and in addition making 50.000$-100.000$+/yr off his blog, 9.999 others will leave 20.000$-100.000$ in the coffers of the trading firms and banks.

[Phoenix]

Well this guy certainly made it work:
http://www.japanprobe.com/2008/05/20/tak...ay-trader/

That said to be that successful you're probably tending to your trades 24/7 (and super inteligent). And probably obsessed too - otherwise why would you continue after having USD100mil in assets? I'd spend all day chasing Japanese hotties and driving them back to my condo in my lambo .

[JayMillz]

(08-09-2014 03:33 AM)2014 Wrote:  

it's something all of us would love to do. massive respect to him

I think being location independent and having your own business are things people admire. People can be original and come up with their own way to do it.

[Quintus Curtius]

Travel is great.

Being independent is great.

Starting a business is great.

I agree fanatically with all of these things, of course, and I do it myself.

But be very wary of stories like this: "I took out 25K in student loans and piddled around on the internet with it, and now I'm a globe-trotting millionaire! Oh, and here's the plug for my site, and if you're daring, you can be just like me!"

Careful, guys, please be very careful. You are not being told the full story. This person is not what he appears to be.

Remember that there is no substitute for long, hard work. Overnight success in any business takes about 20 years. It is a long, hard, brutal slog. And you'd better love what you do, because you will become that thing.

No one should, under any circumstances whatsoever, borrow $25K in student loans to gamble it away on the internet. And yes, day trading is a glorified form of gambling.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(08-09-2014 12:37 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

Careful, guys, please be very careful. You are not being told the full story. This person is not what he appears to be.

Remember that there is no substitute for long, hard work. Overnight success in any business takes about 20 years. It is a long, hard, brutal slog. And you'd better love what you do, because you will become that thing.

No one should, under any circumstances whatsoever, borrow $25K in student loans to gamble it away on the internet. And yes, day trading is a glorified form of gambling.

It's not gambling. It responds to a wide number of patterns that can be learnt - the problem is that the trading style has to fit the individual psychology and that is mostly misunderstood. By default many people cannot even be short-term traders, because they are ill suited for that. The old book "Market Wizards" shows the whole gamut of different trader personalities.

And yes - you are not told the whole story. Just by skipping over the blog you see that the guy has been trading for over 10 years, which means that he started learning it as a teenager and the 25$K was a part of the process (unnecessary in my opinion if he had gone through the books I mentioned above - the books are similar to someone first studying Game instead of only doing approaches and never looking at the basic knowledge). And he says that it took him tremendous discipline - don't be surprised if he put in 80+ to 100+ hour-weeks trading, learning and experimenting.

Again as I have said before - the guy likely makes good money off the blog and banking/trading firms- ads and referrals. He is covered in mainstream news outlets for a reason. The industry needs suckers to believe the story that anyone can become a successful trader or rich Poker Player.

If you want to do it, don't fucking indebt yourself. Read & Study, then take out a virtual account - trade for weeks and months. If successful start out with some minor account and as low as 1000$. With modern tools like some CFDs (those few companies that are not rip-offs) you get enough leverage to reach 10.000-20.000$ - depending on your trading style slower or faster. But you are in no hurry -if it takes 1-2 years, it is still good. Then with 20.000$ you can leave the CFDs and venture into the world of real-life derivatives. If you are a stock trader, then it is even most straightforward, but frankly if you are trading stocks you need 100.000$ to 200.000$ initial capital to make it work, or the risk exposure will kill you.

Either way - most guys will not be able to replicate the success of the guy - just as well as most will not be able to copy Matt Forney as the location independent blogger (but I guess his advice is useful for the 1/10.000 who will make a living off it).

[ElJefe1]

(08-09-2014 12:37 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

Travel is great.

Being independent is great.

Starting a business is great.

I agree fanatically with all of these things, of course, and I do it myself.

But be very wary of stories like this: "I took out 25K in student loans and piddled around on the internet with it, and now I'm a globe-trotting millionaire! Oh, and here's the plug for my site, and if you're daring, you can be just like me!"

Careful, guys, please be very careful. You are not being told the full story. This person is not what he appears to be.

Remember that there is no substitute for long, hard work. Overnight success in any business takes about 20 years. It is a long, hard, brutal slog. And you'd better love what you do, because you will become that thing.

No one should, under any circumstances whatsoever, borrow $25K in student loans to gamble it away on the internet. And yes, day trading is a glorified form of gambling.

Anyone starting a business is taking a gamble doesnt matter if its day trading, IT support, or marketing etc.... If you want to have any chance at success you have to take those gambles. I quit my job 2 years ago cashed in my 401k, sold my place and invested every dime in my online business two years later and a lot of struggles, ups and down it is very profitable...... If you dont swing you'll never get a hit, I'd definitely recommend anyone with the opportunity at success no matter how far fetched it is to anyone else take it.

[Antipodean]

A couple of thoughts on trading financial markets ..

1. It's only gambling if you lose. (cynic's view)

2. Gambling can be extremely profitable. Ask most casino owners!

The thing is that many types of trading offer the mechanism to operate like a casino owner. The problem is that the discipline required is contrary to most peoples nature.

[JayMillz]

[Sherman]

Stay away from daytrading and don't buy a system. It looks like in his other site "Wandering Trader" he is selling a system. There are so many con artists out there that are selling systems that don't work and use standard stuff that you can get on the public domain. If you could really make money day trading, you wouldn't sell it to somebody because any valid system with a positive expectation is scalable and you can become rich using leverage. Since trading is a zero sum game you aren't going to give it away and dilute your system.

If you absolutely have to satisfy your curiosity, the below site has a a lot free information and the system you pay $5000 for is not likely to have anything that's not on this site.

https://www.bigmiketrading.com/

[JayMillz]

(08-12-2014 07:13 PM)Sherman Wrote:  

If you absolutely have to satisfy your curiosity, the below site has a a lot free information and the system you pay $5000 for is not likely to have anything that's not on this site.

https://www.bigmiketrading.com/

No one is trying to copy exactly what this guys does. I don't think that is the take away or the big picture. He is just one example of someone that found a way to make a particular system work for him. Other people do other things to put themselves in a similar position.

[Sherman]

(08-12-2014 07:40 PM)JayMillz Wrote:  

(08-12-2014 07:13 PM)Sherman Wrote:  

If you absolutely have to satisfy your curiosity, the below site has a a lot free information and the system you pay $5000 for is not likely to have anything that's not on this site.

https://www.bigmiketrading.com/

No one is trying to copy exactly what this guys does. I don't think that is the take away or the big picture. He is just one example of someone that found a way to make a particular system work for him. Other people do other things to put themselves in a similar position.

How do you know? Have you seen his tax statement? Otherwise you are just believing words and clever marketing.

[JayMillz]

(08-12-2014 07:41 PM)Sherman Wrote:  

How do you know? Have you seen his tax statement? Otherwise you are just believing words and clever marketing.

I met him and spoke with him for sometime in Medellin. I just happened to bump into him so it wasn't anything planned. I got to see for myself how he rolls. Have I seen his tax statements? No, and I don't want to. I have zero interest in day trading, but I am considering a move to Medellin in a couple of months and that was a lot of what the conversation was about.

[El Chinito loco]

There are a lot of clever people out there running ponzis, mlm, real estate, boiler room, and other marketing type scams. Just because someone is a big baller doesn't mean they made their money the way they said they did. Always do your due diligence and don't get sucked into the hype.

[Sherman]

caveat emptor

https://www.bigmiketrading.com/vendors-p...y-com.html

[JayMillz]

(08-12-2014 08:02 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

There are a lot of clever people out there running ponzis, mlm, real estate, boiler room, and other marketing type scams. Just because someone is a big baller doesn't mean they made their money the way they said they did. Always do your due diligence and don't get sucked into the hype.

I can't speak for others, but I know for myself I'm not trying to get put on. I'm str8 so I don't think about how other people came up in the game. At the same time, I give props if I feel props are due.

[El Chinito loco]

(08-12-2014 08:09 PM)JayMillz Wrote:  

(08-12-2014 08:02 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

There are a lot of clever people out there running ponzis, mlm, real estate, boiler room, and other marketing type scams. Just because someone is a big baller doesn't mean they made their money the way they said they did. Always do your due diligence and don't get sucked into the hype.

I can't speak for others, but I know for myself I'm not trying to get put on. I'm str8 so I don't think about how other people came up in the game. At the same time, I give props if I feel props are due.

I actually respect this guy's grey market hustle. It's legal enough to make him lots of money and not illegal enough to get him thrown in jail for outright fraud.

I'd rank selling daytrading systems alongside alternative medicine pills, magnetic qi bracelets, yoga gurus, and real estate "wealth building" seminars. It's all stuff that has the potential to make you lots of money and depends largely on your hustling skills. It's the purest form of salesmanship.