Hi Sommi,
Well your degree certainly won't hurt...but I came to realize fairly quickly after my degree that what academics do versus the harsh realities of the market are poles apart.
Your statement that most of what you have learnt so far says you can't trade profitably sounds like you've been listening to the old EMH (Efficient Market Hypothesis) and Modern Portfolio Theory.
If this is the case there are some significant criticisms of the above couple of theories, only strengthened by the recent financial crisis.
Is the market random? I'd have to disagree with you there. To me the market is chaotic - which is very different to random, and exploitable to those who can figure out how to do so.
Cheers
Sir O
Sir O said it all.
Market looks like a random walk, but it isn't, otherwise there would be no such thing as a trend.
Market is a chaotic system which becomes quantised in fractal dimensions as information enters and exits the system in those dimensions. Information in this case being the forces of supply and demand.
t for the past 12 months I have been doing extra-research into T/A because I like watching the randomness of the market. I still haven't got a system yet because my capital is so low and I'm unable to buy live software and charting tool programs. Is this shooting myself in the foot?
600 hours is the timeframe the average person can be expect to expend before becoming proficient at anything. A day is a perfectly good amount of time for supply and demand to agree on the closing price of a contract, therefore EOD data is eminently suitable for testing. Plenty of free data around:
http://www.tradingblox.com/tradingblox/free-historical-data.htm
http://www.eoddata.com
spring to mind immediately. If you are 4th year uni you should know at least a little MATLAB or SPSS or something, run your data in that. It's just a time series, you can run the data any style you like, doesn't have to be T/A style. Quantify a few things, is what tech/a and sirO are trying to say. What can you expect from a breakout on low volume on a Wednesday? How many days does the average gap take to fill? If your idea works, how well? If it fails, how badly? A million questions to ask, so figure out the right questions, and work out the answers. None of that will teach you how to trade (only screen time, effort and research will do that - 600 hours of 1 hour a day EOD trading will take you 600 trading days, 250 trading days a year roughly) just how to make trading boring.
Income, Savings, Investment. In that order. Income must be stable, productive, and preferably have nothing to do with the markets. Savings must be liquid, safe, easily accessible, and have nothing to do with the markets. A wise man once said, you are only as wealthy as how many months burn rate you have saved. Once you are wealthy, you can invest only money you can afford to lose, and nothing to do with your savings or income! I like to split the investment 30:70 high risk low risk, in good years high risk will outperform low risk, and in bad years low risk will keep your equity curve smooth. Others I know like to be more risky, and still others, less risky. Up to you, it's all money you can afford to lose, right?
Trading is a profession. There are prerequisites. Without these, trading is HARD. I assume fourth year macro-economics is "HARD" if you haven't done first year econ 101? Same concept applies.