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Meet Dylan The Day-Trader, Or When Fundamentals No Longer Matter
Only 25, self-described 'risk-taker' Dylan Collins plays the markets with a pot of more than $1 million - $100,000 of his own money earned from trading over the past two years, the rest provided by his bosses and partners at AMR Capital Trading. As The Washington Post reports, Dylan exclaims, "trading is fun; for me this is the dream job;" but as they note, for most of us, day trading conjures up the image from the dot-com era of some dude in his pajamas with a two-day growth of beard logged on to a Charles Schwab account buying Nortel Networks and Pets.com on margin. But have no fear for - New York-based AMR, a division of G-2 Trading, is a lot more disciplined and sophisticated than that - specializing in “momentum trading,” riding hot stocks up and cold stocks down, taking advantage of the irrational herd behavior that characterizes financial markets. “I understand the idea that maybe you’d want to do something more meaningful, but I don’t think I need to worry about that at my age,” Dylan explains as he exploits momentary mispricings and sudden spikes in volume.
The thing about this kind of trading is that you don’t have to know very much about the companies whose shares you are buying or selling. “So much of trading is just about intuition,” he adds brushing off how quickly knife-catching turns to blood (as the BTFD strategy backfired on Sino-Forest and Digital Domain).
"This isn’t just an 8 to 4 job. There are a lot of tiny intricacies," he says, "and there are so many others out there doing the easy, obvious trades that they don't really work any more. You have to stay a step ahead of them." On a typical day, Dylan may put in a thousand orders to buy or sell dozens of stocks at prices higher or lower than where the shares are trading at that moment, anticipating movement up or down. Most are never filled - or will be canceled - as prices move in the other direction. By day's end, only a dozen or two trades may be executed.
"Barring some disaster, I can’t imagine leaving this firm,” Dylan declares with the confidence of a twenty-something. "I'm sure this is the perfect career for me." Party likes it's 1999.
I first recall seeing Dylan Collins years ago on the basketball court of my son’s junior high school,... Twelve years later, I am sitting next to Dylan in a nondescript office in one of those new town centers that have sprouted along Florida’s gold coast. Arrayed in two rows, a dozen men, ages 23 to 36, are dressed in dungarees, T-shirts and flip-flops sitting in front of banks of computer terminals, their fingers flying across keyboards, ...
...
Dylan is a day trader ...
...
Only 25, Dylan plays the markets with a pot of more than $1 million — $100,000 of his own money earned from trading over the past two years, the rest provided by his bosses and partners at AMR Capital Trading. While many of Dylan’s high school friends are still grinding it out in graduate school or moving up the ladder of barely paid “internships,” Dylan last year was pulling down a six-figure income.
“Trading is fun,” reports Dylan.
...
It all began with online poker.
“In high school, I started playing $5 games on weekends with my degenerate gambler friends...
...
By senior year, Dylan had given up the “prop player” gig and was simply playing poker for his own account,
...
“I was always doing the go-for-broke strategy,” he says. “The adrenaline rush of playing for thousands of dollars was crazy.”
...
So what’s it like telling your parents that you’ve decided to be a day trader?
“They hated it,”
...
For most of us, day trading conjures up the image from the dot-com era of some dude in his pajamas with a two-day growth of beard logged on to a Charles Schwab account buying Nortel Networks and Pets.com on margin.
New York-based AMR, a division of G-2 Trading, is a lot more disciplined and sophisticated than that — more like a small hedge fund only without any outside investors. That makes it rather unusual. The New York office tends to specialize in “momentum trading,” riding hot stocks up and cold stocks down, taking advantage of the irrational herd behavior that characterizes financial markets. The smaller outpost in West Palm specializes in looking for large but momentary mispricings of stocks that result when there are sudden surges of buy or sell orders that knock a share price off its trend line — “price-action trading” or “liquidity trading,” it is sometimes called.
The thing about this kind of trading is that you don’t have to know very much about the companies whose shares you are buying or selling.
...
“So much of trading is just about intuition,” Dylan says. He tosses around Wall Street jargon and nostrums (“buy on the bid, sell on the ask”) as if he’s an old hand.
...
Dylan started at AMR in August 2010. He didn’t have a positive trading month until January. He didn’t “make his bank” and get his first paycheck until May. In June, he lost it all.
...
“There was this Canadian company, Sino-Forest, that we were all buying,”
...
Dylan noticed a sharp drop in the stock of Digital Domain, a company founded by director James Cameron to do the special effects for the movie “Titanic.” There was no news that might explain the sudden price movement, so Dylan, like a number of his colleagues, jumped in and waited for the natural reversion to trend. When it didn’t happen, the others sold out at a small loss, but Dylan decided not only to hold on but bought even more as the price continued to fall. The “dead cat bounce” he anticipated never came. What eventually did was an announcement that Digital Domain was filing for bankruptcy protection.
...
“This isn’t just an 8 to 4 job,”
...
“There are a lot of tiny intricacies,” he says. “And there are so many others out there doing the easy, obvious trades that they don’t really work any more. You have to stay a step ahead of them.”
...
On a typical day, Dylan may put in a thousand orders to buy or sell dozens of stocks at prices higher or lower than where the shares are trading at that moment, anticipating movement up or down. Most are never filled — or will be canceled — as prices move in the other direction. By day’s end, only a dozen or two trades may be executed.
...
“I understand the idea that maybe you’d want to do something more meaningful, but I don’t think I need to worry about that at my age,”
...
"Barring some disaster, I can’t imagine leaving this firm,” Dylan declares with the confidence of a twenty-something. “I’m sure this is the perfect career for me.”
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Sounds sustainable to me...
It's the perfect career, until it isn't.
Need a Dylan the Day Trader Doll.
Looks like a fleshy colored potato with eyes and ears that pop out when you squeeze its nuts.
Has a matching Andrew Yorks Doll that starts a rumor about the Fed on his plastic Etch-a-Sketch causing Dyaln to have so many bad days back to back he becomes a 24/7 alcoholic and coke snorting bag of quivering protoplasmic jello.
I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.
Johnny Carson
does he have a newsletter?
Less than a zero sum game.
A lot less. Why is that so hard to understand?
Let's hope Dylan's Dad is a US Senator or somehow connected to Congress. Otherwise he's going to lose his ass.
I also just noticed Tyler only used "Nortel" as the tag word on the article. That's fucking funny.
Dylan Collins is... Paperboy 2000®
This guy is still playing in the Pee-Wee league. Let me know when he makes the Pros.
How to lose billions and then love your jail cell
As some who traded Nortel...and miraculously called the top waaaaaaaaay back in the mid-2000's..that little inclusion had me chuckling too
No way. He's Prestige 10 on Call of Duty. Be afraid.
Meet Dylan, the Day Trader Troll
It's great... and short !
Pretty much like the one of a drug dealer...
Yep until it isn't, and then comes the noose...
Unless you are loose as a goose.
Trading is just another form of gambling.
Well you could argue that the whole damned world is a rigged casino. You take the 'prudent' path and the banksters & politicians rob you blind in numerous ways. "Fundamentals ?" . . . right. With all sorts of 'changes in accounting rules' they rig the numbers.
The kid in the article is typical 20 something clueless. Just like most of us were at his age. Maybe rolling the dice is the only game left. More people are being forced to do so by the criminals in charge. Some are forced in the markets and hope theyll get out before the bubble pops. Others, who have fair less funds, go to their corner 7-11 and hope the Lotto ticket they buy will hit. A lot of people in America couldnt come up with $1k in cash to take care of an emergency.
People around the world have been screwed over.
.Gov gets its share is why its legal
And when it doesn't work out and his portfolio implodes on him, we will see what he will do.
We are doomed!
I'm not like the old day traders. This time it's different.
This is what's so frustrating about the markets now. At my age I have the wisdom to be able to hold the gains that dylan will eventually lose, but I don't have the balls ("ignorance is bliss") to risk it all to get that easy money he's making right now. I do daytrade, but I have to stay discipline. As daryl hannah's character said in Wall Street, having money and losing it is worse than never having it to begin with. Some of us understand that sentiment ...
you know this kid is a buy the dip dip.
The kid is making good money and if he loses it all he is back to zero where he started. I actually think if I were him I would consider doing it too. You all say he will lose his shirt but the shirt is borrowed anyway, what the fuck does he care? The joke is on the automatic deposit pension funds that supply the fuel for the HFT algos that fleece them.
Dylan is trading with 100k of his own money and adding to the momenum swarm that the HFT algos use to shave the edges off pennies every millisecond as they frontrun the market and don't get arrested. If I were Dylan I'd be riding that wave too. He may be plugging it all into hookers and blow, or he maybe be salting it away for when this crashes and he has more equity than his sucker friends who bought their quarter million dollar B.A. starting in a country where the middle class got ground up and used for fuel in the Wall Street engine.
This was mentioned on Ritholz's blog - and as he said: "oh yeah, this is going to end well".
It's all going to approx zero. 90% loss in the value of everything but paper money over a period of a decade.
This time it really is different!
Dylan, the Etrade baby, and Rachel should hook up!
i am sure he will work there the rest of his life, right up til he jumps out the window
Ahahahahahaha!
Comment of the year award goes to Seasmoke.
Fuckin' hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuC8GPr31A
Great video. I'm mid 60's; I can relate.
Thank you for the vid.
Where I grew up the cops were quite confrontational/aggressive (not having a go at them - just how things were).
Later, I moved to a medium size regional town (not quite small enough to be a place where everyone was on a first name basis). The first time I got pulled over the cop just talked to me like a human being 'look mate, we've had a few accidents along here where people have been hurt and we really want everyone to slow down' - The polite, respectful, sincere way he spoke to me just shook me to my core and had far greater effect on my behaviour than any speeding fine has ever had.
I have from time to time wondered what it was like 'in the old days' when cops more frequently behaved like cops I met in the regional town.
i fucking laughed until i gagged at this comment. i used to be a daytrader way back when i didnt know my head from my ass. it took me a few weeks to lose years worth of profits.and the fucked up thing is that it doesn't even have to be your fault. 1000 things can go wrong. your stops get blown, orders dont execute. power goes out at exactly the wrong time. your clearing firm has some type of tech/mgmt glitch and liquidates you at the worst possible time, or the Fed will come in and do something they've never done before, fucking up all correlations, or it turns out that one million other traders had the same strategy as you and tried to get out at the same time. LOL. he's young. he'll survive. or... he'll jump out the window
What happened to the other dude Alex Hope! Enquiring minds want to know^^
The self proclaimed FX guru? Closed down & arrested for running an 'unauthorised collective investment scheme' gone quiet now, but jail likely, small fry - not connected etc. Or he could get a job as David Stolpers understudy.
Alex Hope was actually who I was thinking of when I read the title of this thread and before I even clicked on it I was expecting it to be him using an alias or a derivative of him. Thank you for letting us know what happend to the 'Fx Guru'.
What ever happend to that kid squatting in that Bank of America pad in Florida, any updates on that?
The kid in Boca was thrown out of the house over 2 months ago. They supposedly had a security guard at the house 24x7 after the kid was booted out. Hopefully they deported him back to Brazil but in O Amerika - illegals have more rights than Americans.
If he didn't make money on 105% of trading days he can kiss a job offer from Goldman Sachs goodbye.
easy squeezy, lemon peezy.
I'mn sure this is the perfect career for me (until it's not, which might be 10 trading days away)
Dammit, Dylan. How about you actually go produce a physical good and sell it, instead?
This guy's quotes make me fucking retch.
this site is not about producing anything ... is about short cuts ... the only debate is which short cut should we take ...
Dylan should just STACK that way he wouldn't have worry about taking losses
Ya he probably did then realized he was stacking stuff that didn't pay the bills.
Bernanke must be proud of him!
"Barring some disaster"............
Something tells me that phrase is going to come back and hanut this young man.
It goes to show he does have trading instincts....
....he's just using them the wrong way
day trading = gambling.
pure and simple.
always has been.
always will be.
"Dylan started at AMR in August 2010. He didn’t have a positive trading month until January. He didn’t “make his bank” and get his first paycheck until May. In June, he lost it all."
Hey I could do that.
Think of all the Implied GDP!
And the short-term Capital Gains Tax rake for "the House of O"...this can ELIMINATE the deficit in no time, which is, in and of itself, BULLISH....
ps. I am sure 'ol Dylan presciently shorted that spike at Friday's close...
These are the articles that the new censors in Switzerland want you to read & regard Dylan with shock & awe... A few more articles like this & the site becomes Marketwatch...
That's scary Francis. But it is a fair observation.
Barring some disaster.
heh.
Jesus. GS/UBS/JPM/etc's wet dream, one day they can put a $100 Brillion trading loss on his ass and say he was a rogue trader... even though he was sucessfully pulling in Billions for the firm and raking in multi Million bonuses which he might end up spending on $100,000 bottles of champagne in a club, hookers n blow, exotic cars, and hot real estate in btfd greece.
Though hopefully he treats his momma right and saved a money on the side as a rainy day fund.
'Gamblers Anonymous', has a beautiful courtyard view suite pre-reserved for Dylan. (if he isn't suicided first)
He is one bidless moment away from a cardiac arrest
The HFTs love guys like him, I'm sure.
Reminds me of that guy on TV used to sell his scheme called "Trend Trading to Win." Looked and talked like he was straight out of that movie "The Boiler Room" (a movie that should be required viewing for all ZH'ers if you somehow missed it). Young Dylan sounds like he took his course.
Not a bad gig for his investors. His terminal goes dead with a all sell order at a 10% loss.
That is crazy placing a thousand trades on a day. I have been "day trading" for six years, and unless I am trading futures I am putting on 3-4 trades a day, tops.
I wonder what his net percentage gain is?
something tells me he's too busy to do all that "old school" records-keeping.
In 2010, he could have just bought XIV, the inverse to volatility with a perpetual contango, went home and be up 400%, even with a 75% drawdown at one point.
Or even better just short some triple leveraged piece of crap like FAZ by selling option call spreads and let daily slippage do its loss compounding magic. If you look like you're going to take a monthly loss just roll out in duration-time is in your favor. This is as close to free money as you're going to get.
Dylan needs to look up the Gambler's ruin problem and learn that the way to avoid it is to decrease the size of your bet when you're losing, only increase it proportional to edge/odds when you're winning. But what exactly is Dylan's edge? That's the rub-he doesn't have one.
Dylan AKA "The Human Algo". /s
If he ever gets his own reality show you'll all be watching.
That is a great idea. Perfect cast; egotistical, narcasistic, compulsive tendencies, flashing the cash, major low points, young hotties, etc.
Does anyone remember when a stock market was about uniting investors with companies and entrepreneurs seeking capital investment to produce things with?
Neither do I.
Couple more years and the only question will be, "In which droor of his desk is he hiding the $150 million of losing trades?".
Dylan BTFD, MDB BTFD, FED BTFD, CNBC BTFD, Everybody at the party BTFD.
Time to close my Scottrade account..
The moment you say you've got it all figured out...that's when you are about to experience humility.
I wonder if Dylan realizes that the monopoly money he plays with means a bowl of rice and real life necessities to billions? This cavalier way of dealing with 'money' is so wrong in so many ways! One day the value of money will come rushing back to bite the people that are misusing it in this way, and that day won't go down well for them.
I've seen this story before.
How did that criminal case work out for him, anyone bother to chase the story? [Cliff notes: you'll want to find ZH's party story, about the wunderkid who was dropping Bollinger on the ladies]
Makes me pissed I once wasted time reading "Graham and Dodd" cover to cover.
"Dude, Graham and who?"
not much different than Paul Tudor Jones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWbl9TbAZHg in 1985
SEEEEEELLL threethousandandseventy (bitch!) - great blast from the past, thanks. The gym looks awesome too.
OOOH! I got my nickel's worth from the peanut gallery. YEAH!
Not sure why everybody shits on day trading? All little Dylan is doing is basically the same as investing - buy/sell something you think is mispriced, make profit - he just does it faster than an investor. Otherwise, no difference. Plus any money he makes (if any) is spent on real goods & services in the real economy. This is $ that would otherwise go into the coffers of banks engaged in prop trading, or into a bankers bonus. So why all the hate for day traders? Seriously?
Totally agree. The kid is neither printing money nor will he need to be bailed out, and I am sure somebody is writing a Dylan-fucking algo right this moment that will either throw him under the bus or make him wiser. Let him have his little wager.
"So why all the hate for day traders?"
i dont think is hate ... it is rather pity. most of the people over here have been around the block a few times and know very well where this road leads ....
as far as his doulers supporting the real economy ... please save it! the real economy needs much more help than what you seem to believe ...
so, like dylan....don't worry about the bosses using software to replace you after they learn your moves....
:)
Quoting Chris Griffin: "I don't hate him, I just think he's a douche."
Keep picking up pennies ahead of a steam-roller kid, go get levered up 35-1 and ride it hard. When it all blows up in your face, don't worry, your only 25, gives you plenty of time to work at mcdonalds to pay back the loan.
Bruno Iksil London Whale meet Dylan Daytrader Gold Coast Minnow
Fundamentals have never mattered. Soros traded 'fundamentals' and he's not exactly people's hero now is he?
Is this a Cramer replacement TV show?
Then there'll be HFT show.
By the way, Tyler, let's start a ZH Poll if markets crash before the next bandwidth upgrade cycle at the exchanges :D :D
If you take these cocksuckers on directly, you are going to lose and the only money you'll have left will be a payday loan to get your crack fix, and you'll sell your body to a big buck who will ream your ass, and then you'll get a rectal abscess and the staph infection will spread throughout your body and finally you will die in a nursing home being tended to by some Spanish speaking illegals.
Buy physical precious metals, go Galt, and watch the entire system come down.
everyone is a genius in a bull market. a real bear shows who still has their balls left. everyone i know has blown up. i have blown up twice in 15 years of trading because a mind is a terrible thing. it can con you into doing the stupidest damn things. the last time was holding shorts way too long in 2009 because the market should not have kept going up. the only thing that saved me was i learned to put my extra cash into reasonably illiquid assets(ag and au and real estate) so i won't convert it to cash to continue whatever stupid trade is blowing up because it is a "sure thing" and will turn any second.
the best thing about trading at 25 years old is you are too dumb to know what is going on and young enough to recover when you find out. i wish him good luck.
.
BANZAI7 NEWS--Meet the latest 401K-9 stock picker, Jesse Liverhunde. Jesse decided to enter the long bone style equity trading game last year when his hero Barnum Berspanky announced QE4. He says momo trading the DJIA is much easier than tearing apart his master's leather furniture, shitting on the carpets or reading a bank's MD&A. He calls his equity long strategy: "Massage my nuts." His message to potential investors in his newly organized hedge hund: the ball's are in your court.
His goal is to out perform the stock picking Valley Girl and the synthetic swap trading parrot, Birdie Num Num, utilizing the slightly modified efficient market hundpothesis.
This hund is clearly different!
Wonderful!
Now Banzai that's uncalled for ....
that said, i give you credit for being so smart!
He should have stayed in Engineering school. He could have programed his buying/selling rules into a rules based trading program and sold that to the WS Ibanks. They are stupid as hell. He would have made a boatload. could have kept a % as well.
His full name is Dylan Bernanke.
Day trader waste of life. Nothing personal.
This guy is a disgrace and will get his ass handed to him.
Strong rectangles are forming in many commodities tonight while traders wait for five big #s coming out of China in 99 min.
6J and 6A are in uncharted territory.
I remember when the markets were 75% INVESTING, and 25% speculation. Now, it is the other way around. It has become gambling, nothing more, nothing less. This kid will end up jumping off the roof of his employer's building one day {soon, actually} if he doesn't stop NOW. Wait until the euphoria turns into misery. Why trade these "markets" at all? They have been captured for the most part. Very little real about them now days. He's probably short JCP. Wait until Ican buys it out at $35 and this kid's account goes poof overnight. I've seen that look on people's face before, words can't describe it well enough.
In an HFT kill, this guy is the meat
Wow. I want to do that too. Specially the "other peoples money" bit. Sounds fun and inexpensive...for me.
GOOD FOR HIM !! FUNDMENTALS NEVER MATTERED THAT MUCH IN TRADING, COS THERE S NO "FUNDAMENTAL" CHANGE FROM A DAY TO ANOTHER ANYWAY.....
Sounds like this is written by someone that
would like you to loose all your money
in the leveraged and rigged market.
We are in a DEBT BUBBLE -
a QE Stimulus Bubble !!!
The biggest we ever seen.
Just look at Japan:
Fukushima melt-down and fuck ups gallore,
but the Markets rally on Disaster and on the smell of another QE.
World Markets are fucked up, so how do you want to trade that shit ?
Down a full bottle of Jack Daniels , then you might last a month, before
you take out that Gun and forget there was a bullet in it...
if you know what I mean...
Some unlucky souls set themselves alight in front
of the Tax department...
what do you think went wrong ?
have you ever been audited by the Tax department
after a rollercoaster ride in a daytraders nightmare ?
good luck !
wr;)
Yep - more MSM pumping the "big scores" you can make when trading just like some 25 year old.
BTFD has evolved to BTFT - buy the top.
Bag holders only please.
The real Dylan must be awfully pleased over these developments.
I am a trader myself and I love doing it! It's exciting and it pays well if you are good. But even if you are no good as a trader you can make money by simply copying good traders!
Actually guys this works. I do it some myself and have actually paid off my house and everything else. I know some really high level traders like this that make good $ almost everyday. The comments 'it will work till it don't' are pretty much irrelevant they've been doing it for years. The learning curve sucks. I lost $7k in seconds. Many say T/A doesn't work anymore. LOL. Sorry Charlie.........that's all that works.
re: "New York based AMR, a division of G-2 Trading"
Let me guess, this a good solid Capitalist bidness owned and run by rich WASPs. /s
oh wait...
quote from: http://www.g-2trading.com/about/
Oh shit! I forgot it's against new ZH policy to point out things like that, my bad.
Playing Kenny Rogers 24/7...gets you all pumped up, while staring at your losses.
You all can do it. Help the banks to improve earnings!
Banks love gamblers...commissions and fee income.