The Best and Worst Job in the World – Being a Trader

When I was at school, they had a multiple choice assessment for all the kids when they reached the age of 13. It tested various skills and it’s aim was to give the students and their parents an idea of suitable careers they may wish to consider. At the time it was considered cutting edge and the ‘tests’ were viewed with trepidation for fear of being pigeon holed as a future chimney sweep, cobbler or window cleaner – no offence to any cobblers, cleaners or ‘sweeps that may be reading this.

The Best and Worst Job in the World

One job above all others was seen as ‘the job’, it was as if getting this profession selected as a potential career was in itself a huge boost and step up the slippery ladder amongst ones peer group. Ridiculous but true.

When the results were published, there seemed to be a year group full of mostly lawyers, marine biologists (not sure how that one was triggered), teachers, explorers and a select few that hit the jackpot - ‘commodities traders’. Of course, at the time, being a trader was all red Porsches, cocktails and braces. Open outcry trading was still in existence and it wasn’t necessary to have a degree to become one of this new breed of confident, arrogant alpha males. Fortunes were made and lost and it seemed that all you needed was confidence and ‘chutzpah’. In the early 1990’s, it felt as though being a trader was the quickest and most exciting way to become very wealthy, very quickly. It helped that traders appeared to flaunt their wealth more than equally wealthy lawyers, consultants and bankers. In many ways, not a huge amount has changed, as successful traders can still earn huge amounts of money and compared to other professions, it can be done quite quickly.

There are many different types of rader. Some risk their own money and work from home, others risk their firm’s money and are rewarded with a split of any profit. Others work for banks or funds and receive a salary and bonus dependent on how well they have performed. Of course there are a myriad of products that can be traded and most traders tend to stick to one product until they have developed a mastery, or as close to a mastery as possible, of that particular product. It is rare that you find a trader that can trade several products equally well, even though the rules and skills are pretty similar.

Other traders are not traders at all. They are ‘account managers’. They are not really ‘account managers’ either. They are salesmen. I used to employ many of these type of ‘traders’ and their job was to build relationships with their clients and give advice on the markets when required. They never traded their own funds and the trade ideas mostly came from analysts. Of course, if you give advice on the stock market, you can legitimately claim to be a trader I guess, but it’s worth noting all the different types as some have lots of brains and others just have lots of chat.

Most people become traders because they wish to back their judgement against others and be rewarded handsomely when and if correct. The best paid traders will be those that deliver the biggest profits and those will be the traders with the biggest credit lines and best information, research and lowest fees. It will also be the luckiest ones, as all traders need lady luck smiling on them occasionally, I assure you.

I have met a handful of traders that claim they enjoyed the mental challenge of trading against others in the market, but most of all, I think they enjoyed the way they were able to keep score of how they were performing during the challenge and you keep score by counting your money. It all comes down to money in the end. You live or die by your decisions and results, there are no excuses or explanations required – the result is binary. You win or you lose. That is very appealing to people with personalities that don’t have a high tolerance for BS.

The Best and Worst Job in the World – Being a Trader      

I see many training courses being marketed online and in print offering to ‘train people to trade and earn a fortune’ from the comfort of their own home. These courses claim they will reveal the ‘secrets’ of all successful traders and the courses tend to cost thousands rather than hundreds to attend once you have been lured into attending the first (free) session which is a series of hints and vague talk of these ‘secrets’.

Of course, there are no secrets and these courses and their marketing are cynical ways to take advantage of those most desperate to earn a good living. In fact, there are a handful of rules that every successful trader needs to stick to just to be in with a chance of making that fortune. I will share the most important ones now and they are simpler than you may expect.

-          Accept you will lose almost as often as you win

-          Be prepared to cut your losing trades and run your profitable ones

-          Don’t have opinions set in stone. Markets change and you need to be flexible

I will discuss these rules in more detail at a later date, but rest assured, only around 5% of traders can stick to them consistently.

Of course, in 2017, it’s less to do with personalities and chutzpah and chat have taken a back seat to technology and trading programs that execute thousands of trades in the blink of any eye. These trading algorithms are the present and the future, but if you can win more than you lose and keep your cool when others are losing theirs – you may still be able to make a fortune. But it won’t be easy.

James Sanders is a London based prop trader and investor who provide the help in property treading and business development.

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