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Professional poker player transitioning to day trading - please advise
The heart surgeon analogy is not really a good one. Why? because you lack the tools to pick a good mentor.
As a surgeon, you would be schooled on "proper" procedures for about 5-7 years and intern before you take over the job on your own. In trading there is no such training available on a formal basis for trading ....
In Trading of any stripe, there are no two traders that have exactly the same philosophy and traders that are really competent don't usually outline their approach....most are outright secretive about their money machine or have no time to mentor. futures.io (formerly BMT) trading does have several people here that offer good advice though. Having participated on several sites over the years the REALLY bad advice is filtered out here by Mike.
That is why you should research methodologies yourself and piece together your strategy. You want to "scalp".... You want to "daytrade" commodities, forex or equities..... You want to Swing trade or Long term hold... whatever... find websites/books that describe the ins and outs of the type of trading, you think you want to do. You won't find a perfect system....but you will find some stuff that makes sense to you. Search for journals here for BM traders that talk about the type of trading that interests you, ask questions and you start assembling bits and pieces that can be made into a strategy.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I'm sure you know what was meant.
No one would suggest you try to do brain surgery without proper training.
But to 'copy' another without making the technique your own is setting up for disaster.
We all learn from every thing we experience but if I only use someone else's techniques and never adapt them to my own strengths and weaknesses I will never be all that I can be.
Too many traders think the path to success it to copy another trader.
I'm sure if you are successful in poker you have observed other professionals and taken parts of their techniques and made them your own. But all that you do and all that you are as a poker player should be unique to you.
If you are an exact copy of Phil Ivey and your opponent discovers this, you are toast because if they study Phil Ivey, they know what you will do. Trading is the same. The difference is the person across the table is not looking into your eyes but they know what you will do because they know your technique.
Good Luck with this I hope you seek your own path.
Rejoice in the Thunderstorms of Life . . .
Knowing it's not about Clouds or Wind. . .
But Learning to Dance in the Rain ! ! !
Playing poker normally is Casino - with more negative than positive outcome.
Professional poker player with an edge has surely some experience which can be helpful for trading:
namely "nerves of steel"!
But starting the adventure of trading for a pro poker player means: No Short Circuit! As all others.
Reading the tape, taking good decision(s) and having a perfect money management means
a lot of trial and error.
Begin with learning it quickly here on futures.io (formerly BMT) - you have got already the best threads to start with.
Good start!
GFIs1
I also got into trading while being heavily into poker and can attest to what treydog mentioned and feel it was a huge help in the initial learning curve. The psychology part is more or less the same and having that edge/probability mindset is a huge advantage in trading. There have been several books written on the similarities of the two so I would say as a professional poker player you are already ahead of the majority of day traders. As others have stressed it is vital to form your own strategy and you need to try to steer away from following others. Best thing to do is to read lots of recommended books mentioned in this forum, sign up to a demo account and pick an instrument and focus on it exclusively and find a strategy using trial and error.
@DavidHP
Be leaf. Be water.
I actually meditate and even did two 10-day silent retreats in Buddhist monasteries (I'm an atheist, not a Buddhist though)
@ everyone
Well, I guess the consensus is that you have to develop your own way of trading. When I started thinking about it, it reminded me of this:
And I guess this is my point. In the end I obviously want to trade "like me". But at day 1 it is hard. I don't disregard advice I get here (very thankful for it actually ), but I guess in the beginning I will be forced to copy a little something. Not to duplicate someone else, but to have a starting point. Like David said:
PS - I pasted this video cause it's funny and relevant to the discussion. I actually advise to not play at the poker room advertised in it.
As a poker player....how long was it from when you thought about being a professional poker until you sat down at your first table to play for serious money against other professional poker players?
What did you do to prepare for such a game?
Is poker playing so easy that you can step into a live game and expect to win?
Do you think that investing in the stock market is easier than playing professional poker?
You seem to be in a hurry to jump in and play the market without very much of a plan on how to do it. I am not being too negative here but what is the completion of this expression that I think is attributed to poker...
“If you sit down at the table and don’t know who the fish is – ____________”
I started during poker boom, so it's quite irrelevant (it was super easy then, I studied for a few days and became a substantially winning player immediately after that). Now it is way tougher, but if someone asked me how to start in poker I would direct him to a poker strategy forum, where there are courses that teach you very basic way of playing, which can make you profitable at micro stakes. This is your starting point and you develop from there, moving up in stakes when your skills improve.
Anyway this is the part where comparing poker and trading is pointless, exactly because in poker you have different skill requirements for different levels (you can learn how to make a dollar a day in 2 hours, for higher stakes you may need months, years or might never get there).
Again as above - depends on what level. On a serious level I think the two are comparable, maybe trading is a bit tougher, but hard to tell from my position as I have no experience in trading and this would be a wild guess.
Hm.. Where did I make this impression? I want to learn for a few weeks and, after that proceed to paper trading and move to real money months from now. I though I communicated that :/ It is true that I am somehow rushed, but to start learning, creating "the plan" as you called it. I am still a little lost in the overabundance of information/ways to go about it, but some ideas start to crystallize.
Can definitely empathize there! The amount of info can be overwhelming but the more you soak in the better. I would suggest reading Elder Alexander's 'come into my trading room' or 'trading for a living' followed by Mark Douglas's classic, 'trading in the zone' as these should give a bit of foundation.
As others will tell you, you will likely find out that trading successfully is a much bigger and more challenging task than one can imagine.
Judging from your posts I would say you are on the right track and have the correct mentality at this point except that you seem under the pretense that you will pick trading up as quickly as poker. There are similarities for sure but being successful at poker does not guarantee success in trading.
To summarize the usual advice to newcomers:
1. Elite membership
2. watch Mike's newbie webinar
3. pick one approach and stick with it
4. log your trades and journal your psychology here at futures.io (formerly BMT)
5. paper trade a short while then get some skin ($500 account) in the game
Specific approaches, let's back up to Dough.com -- very user friendly options trading platform that incorporates a coherent and FREE learning program to take you from a cold start to being able to trade options, with an options trading certificate that TDAmeritrade will honor in giving you permission to trade options.
The Dough program is oriented to starting with the $500 account and trade/small trade/often.
If you want to watch the learning process in action, see Tom Sosnoff take his daughter Case from a cold start to trading a $500 account in 2 weeks:
Then watch the first two weeks of episodes and get started on the certificate with Dough app.
***Caveat, this program is free on the frontend, and Ameritrade expects to make its money on the backend through your racking up high trading commissions under the "trade/often" concept. So once you start trading real money, you get a much cheaper broker and keep Ameritrade for research.
If you watch a few of those videos, you will see Tom hammering away at the importance of "cost basis" to the success of the trade. Significantly, he neglects to mention that the high commissions also affect cost basis.
But if you look at trading as a business, and you must, then cost basis needs to be addressed in everything. And that means the cost of education, information services, equipment, etc.
Day traders are like 49ers, lot of 'em succumb to the temptation to spend inordinate amounts of money on picks and shovels. At the end of the day, the one that banks the money is the saloonkeeper, the hardware store owner, and all the other vendors in town. Them canned peaches is pricey.
This only jacks up your cost basis and lowers your probability of making it through the first year.
