Hey everyone, I want to thank everyone in advance for their input on this thread. I have been interviewing lately at some proprietary trading firms lately and want some advice regarding my logic. I have worked the last year and a half as a financial advisor and been successful at it at a premier boutique. Before that I worked for 6 years clerking on the floor at the CBOT while I worked through college. My experience with the financial markets is pretty deep and I feel sufficient to have a reasonable shot at trading for a living. Currently I am just plain tired of my job and have a hard time seeing myself doing it for long. It is a good career but boring and unchallenging if you ask me. Trading is my passion and likely always will be. I have had decent success for a few years trading etfs and usually profit on 80% of my trades by a considerable percentage on my principal. So, I started interviewing at a few places and got my resume out and am at a turning point. I will likely have a job offer from one firm and I feel like it will be my opportunity to take the plunge and give it a shot. You are an employee there but you only get a draw, I think limited at 30k for the first six months. It is mainly futures, some options. Full benefits and I want to say a 50/50 split. Do you guys think it is crazy to give up a well rooted career that would likely be a safe bet for financial security down the road and may be decently prosperous to take a shot at a prop firm with that kind of deal?? I have always felt very confident in my ability to be successful at trading but I only have a track record of say 100 trades that I hold for 0.25-5 days. Thank you all again, I apologize for the lengthy post!
If trading is your passion noone can stand between you and a trading career. If you've spent all your free time working on trading and preparing yourself for it, then it's your passion. If you've played around, read a couple of books and think it's for you, then it probably isn't. Professional trading isn't going to be as exciting as your present job. As a discretionary trader your only challenge is to determine the correct market enviornment. The process of figuring risk per-trade, stop placement, and followup action are pre-determined based on the market environment and your firms risk management. The only acceptable reason to trade is for the money. Any other reason will likely be drowned out during your first drawdown. From a emotional standpoint be prepared to have your emotions dulled over time. The longer you trade the less excited you'll become from profitable trades and the less depressed you'll become from losing trades. This will carry over into your relationships with others. You won't feel the great joy from your first child or the deep loss from the passing of a loved one the way others do. Make sure you can live with this dulling as I think it is the greatest downside to profitable trading. Good luck and welcome to my world.
I disagree with a lot of this. Trading is still fun for me, 15 years after I started. There are more avenues for novel research, creativity and thinking than you could follow in one lifetime. I trade at least in part for personal challenge and satisfaction. The monetary rewards and freedom are also great in themselves - most people do jobs for the pay, not the "job satisfaction". Regarding flattening of emotions, I haven't really found that to happen over the years, if anything it's slightly the opposite. For me, trading has been an awesome career with no downside and loads of benefits, and I thank my lucky stars that it exists.