Moving from Tech to Trading?

DJ Paradox asks: "I've been working in IT for around 11 years now and more recently in IT Security within the Finance/Investment Bank arena. I'm looking into the prospects of a change to an entirely different field, working on the trading floor. I've read a few books on trading but most of them seem to be geared toward the Do-It-Yourself-Day-Trader instead of a professional career. I don't have a finance degree but have a permanent position with a good sized global bank and a manager who is willing to help. So I ask Slashdot if anyone has recommendations for courses, books, websites that I should cover to get a head start in this transition. Have any of you made a similar jump? Should I try to move towards a more trader-aligned tech group first and build relationships? Should I try to go for Equities or Futures & Options trading? What markets would be the best to start/learn with?"

Comments

Re:Awesome question, I have one too.

[npietraniec]

You're going to have a hell of a time day trading with $1000 - and you haven't done much research, as live broker fees are way higher than fees you'll see at etrade or tdameritrade (which are typically around 10 bucks a trade depending on where you go)

Re:Awesome question, I have one too.

[Faizdog]

I can help you out there. I was in the same situation 2 months ago. I'd been working for two years, and had about $5-10k that I wanted to play around in the stock market with, but all of the big online firms, ETrade, Schwab, Fidelity, etc. had fee structures that were much more expensive than I was comfortable with/could afford.

I finally ended up going with Scottrade, at www.scottrade.com. They're a discount online broker who charge a flat $7 commission per each sell or buy, regardless of how big or small the order.

They're a discount broker, so they don't have all the whizbang services and features of the other guys, but I didn't need any of that. I was comfortable doing my own research and everything. All I need was a cheap way to buy and sell stocks in relatively small quantities online. And Scottrade fit that perfectly.

Check them out and see if it's appropriate for what you want to do.

Disclaimer: I am not employed by Scottrade, the only relationship I have with them is the one described above where I am a happy customer.