Hi Mike,
I am from Singapore, and I recently just finished reading “The Playbook”. I read “One Good Trade” a few years back and got me propelled into the right mindset a trader should have. I like how the book has included the part of how a professional trader thinks, I used to think that a trading plan only includes where to buy or where to sell, where to stop and what are the targets. After reading your book, I realize there is more that I should do.
I have been trading Forex through Oanda, I keep a trading journal, screen shot my before and after trades, and also look back from time to time to see if I am following my trading plan or if I can do something better. The long-term goal for me is like you mentioned in your book, I wish to be a multi-product trader, and the mid term goal is to get myself into a career such as a trader or remiser or broker, where I am connected to the markets. While the short-term goal for me now is to get to a point of trading Forex where it becomes a mechanical emotionless process for me.
However, I have this thought of late, being proficient at trading an instrument such as Forex from retail brokers, may not be a very useful skill to hone, because after all, the volume, buyers and sellers are only that of Oanda’s clients. It is not really a “true” price discovery process after all different retail brokers have their candlesticks shown differently at times. Unlike the stock or futures market, where there is one exchange, every broker is connected and looking at that one single chart. Also I have almost never seen before that Prop firms, buy-side firms or Hedge funds have any interest in retail Forex trading results.
Do you think I should just stick to what I am doing at the moment and do it good before moving to stocks? Or it would be more beneficial for me to move to stocks now, while I am still in the process of building my playbook, because firms are more interested to look at someone with a trading history in equity, rather than retail forex?
@MikeBellafiore
I will speak for our firm, SMB Capital.
We would prefer your results were in options, futures, equities or automated trading.
In the picture above Andrej, in the middle, was a former student of Seth Freudberg, on the right, and then earned a seat on our options trading desk. Andrej developed a track record as a retail options spread trader and mentored with Seth.
Recently, we hired an equities day trader, who developed a track record as a retail trader. His results were not outstanding, but they showed edge and we liked his mindset. We have had success hiring the right day traders with even just nominal past success and growing them into high performing traders.
In fact, one of our best traders on the desk presently, traded some in college and trained with us. And then we hired him to train and trade with us. Year3 with us has seen this trader become a high performing trader.
Merritt Black, originally trained by us as an equities trader, now runs our futures trading chat room. Our hope is the best traders in the room, who develop a relationship with Merritt, will trade for the firm.
SMB Training brings professional trader training to retail traders. And we hope the best students go on to trade a fully funded account for the firm.
Thank you for reaching out to us from Singapore.
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