If so, does anybody use their QF skills?

did so some time ago, basically based on news + technical analysis only (quite successful when accrued: if you are consistent with your strategies, you can double your capital every year quite easily)

QuoteOriginally posted by: Tomfryou can double your capital every year quite easily)lol - I must admit I'm not 100% convinced..If you doubled your capital every year, why aren't u doing it anymore? Sounds to me as if it's a piece of cake.....

just because it's a real nerve-cracking thing. First, you have to be able to trade the US with absolutely no limit, and you have to stick to your screen all day long... come on, have a life  

Tomfr, What markets were you trading mainly?Minal

Nasdaq and some NYSE as well as FX

QuoteOriginally posted by: Grotifantlol - I must admit I'm not 100% convinced..If you doubled your capital every year, why aren't u doing it anymore? Sounds to me as if it's a piece of cake.....The main reason most daytraders fail after a few good years, is because they don't understand why what they were doing worked. They have pattern-recognition, and news-absorption talent, but they don't have a broader theory or economic understanding of the markets. So they don't know how to recognize new opportunities to apply their talents.Also, most of what they do (that is still profitable) cannot be automated and is extremely labor-intensive, but cannot be scaled above a few hundred thousand. This is why they have prop shops like Schoenfeld, All-Tech, Broadway Trading, WorldCo Clearing, and so on. Since successful traders only have one pair of eyes and fingers, they quickly want to bring in their slacker buddies to teach them to do what they do and scale up their operation. They use various types of "market scanners" and other tools that help them find opportunities among thousands of stocks, but there's no real substitute for a person with his ears perked up.I remember, possibly the best of the daytraders during the Internet boom told me he was going to teach me how to trade the NYSE closing imbalances published on Bloomberg. I thought he was going to teach me what to watch for, typical patterns - beginner errors - who knows. Turns out what he should have said was that he was going to teach me "to trade" the closing imbalances, because that's all there was to it. "C" would hit the Bloomberg screen, I'd shout it out, and he'd start punching keys like a monkey with a shaved head wired to the Bloomberg terminal.It just so happened that when the closing imbalances hit the tape, was a good time for the fastest members of the pack to trade trend and scalp a few pennies. You can look inside the rules restricting specialist behavior advertised by the NYSE to populate the book, and develop a theory as to why this might be the case. But these kids never heard of any such thing.I should point out, that this is no different from what George Soros does.

I'm sure there are ways to make money in the market (otherwise I wouldn't trade, would I?), but the below statement rather sounds like Barings announcing that they have come to the conclusion that it is not terribly difficult to make money trading derivatives - as they say......if it looks too good to be true, it usually isn't. No doubt, there are a lot of smart guys out there who might be able to make consistent profits by exploiting some anomalies, but as farmer mentioned, this will be hard work.......and I wouldn't rely on doubling the capital every year

Is there a way to daytrade credit derivatives for a living as a private person or would I have to create a hedge fund for that?

legally in the US you can trade for yourself, or for one other person (not you + one other person) without becoming a hedge fund or registering with the National Futures Association or SEC or whoever. As for who will let you do it or what trading systems to use, you can probably learn much by searching these forums. Or just save yourself some time and sign up with esignal (http://www.esignal.com) or someone else (http://www.interactivebrokers.com/php/main.php) EDIT: I am not a lawyer, so consult one before proceeding

Here's the rub.What happens if you have a down month or down year?How do you pay the bills? Hopefully your spouse is still working a regular ("real") job. ;-)As for applying quants skills, I've found it's not necessary.Maybe it sounds sexy to say so or attempt to do this, but I've done OK in the past trading futures just using chart patterns and candlesticks.No need for an MS, although I'm pursuing one for professional reasons.When you think about it, as a trader, you're either trading technicals, trading fundamentals, or trading on insider information.And luck plays a role too, so don't think you're too smart. Some years your strategy works well, in other years it doesn't.I've seen it for the desks I cover and the pot of gold doesn't last forever, unless you're in sales or origination.It also takes a lot of hard work to keep performance up and to look for new ways to make money before rest of the market figures it out, as someone metioned below.The only way to guarantee a profitable trading business is to do what Duke and Duke did on "Trading Places".To paraphrase the movie: Doesn't matter whether market goes up or down, as we still charge the client a commission.This is why I never understood why salesmen want to become traders.