My First Year as a Trainee Futures Trader

It’s October and I have been working for Positive Equity as a trainee futures trader for 1 year this month. I won’t say it flew by. To be honest I’m exhausted, but there is still so much more I need to get better at before I foresee a break. My trading is steadily improving, month in, month out. It took that dreaded step back from when I switched to live trading but I’m almost back on track. One of my colleagues was the first to hit his target. Actually, he was first out of both of this generations Split and Dublin trainee classes. It is a massive achievement since our goal the month before was only not to lose money. I hope I’m not far behind. October has started out really well for me; we will see how it goes.

Our new generation of trainees will be starting soon and we will soon be getting their desks ready, setting up computers for trading etc. I think they will find the first couple of months much easier than we did. I remember the first couple of weeks we would come in to work around 9am before a senior trader hinted that we were expected to be in at 7:30. We had no idea. We were told that if we were able to do all the tasks assigned for the day, we could come in anytime before 10am. We work to 22:15 so we didn’t see a problem. Some things are rules; some things are just expected. I think they will find the office more laid back than what we found it to be. Much noisier too.

The first part of a trainee futures traders career is learning the basics of futures trading. Our goal in the beginning is getting everyone on the same page on all the trading theory stuff. Looking back I feel we could have gone through it all a bit faster than we did. Getting used to the 14/15 hour days took a toll on our efficiency but I think if we had known how great going on the trading simulator would be we would have powered through it, done more assignments ahead of time. So if there is one point of advice I would give the new futures trading class, it would be that. Because the trading simulator is where you find out if this is the career for you and just how fun this career in futures trading can be.