Someone who finds day trading tedious will be unlikely to put in the effort required to get to 1 million a year, whereas if they love speculating or investing then they might put in enough effort to make 1 million a year (or a lot more). People rarely succeed at difficult endeavours without being passionately interested in them.
you can maybe start with stocks with short term trading for several days with a profit objective. learn the markets & develope a gameplan . you have to build a solid foundation Once you are profitable & know you can do this full time then it warrants jumping in with both feet if you make money trading short term you may not want to daytrade some traders make more money short term trading then they ever would daytrading . pro/cons to both time frames You making 200k per year now so their is no rush to jeopardise your income to see if daytrading is for you or not especially with your high expectations It comes down to learning & knowing you can make money consistently from trading . trading is a tough businsess to be in. it's a emotional rollercoaster that you ride everyday Most would take your 200k income not to trade. keep that in mind
It would not occur to me to trade, or follow any other profession for that matter, if I did not have an interest. This is not the same as being passionate about something, but committing to doing something brings with it the duty to do what is required, to the extent it is required - regardless of our thoughts on whether it is easy or hard, and regardless of whether we might say we have done enough when our results prove otherwise. If you find investigation, research, problem solving, and execution tedious you would be well advised to do something else. If you are in trading you ought to make yourself rich as soon as you can. This is doing what needs to be done the most effective way you can - not messing about with self imposed fetishes, or not putting in the effort because you find it tedious. In short, those who claim they wish to be traders but are secretly unwilling to do the work will never get there. Was there a time when most people lived their own lives to suit themselves, chose professions due to their own interest and talents (not so they could live someone elses life, make the neighbours envious or the family proud, because the media told them it was glamorous, or because they were too insecure to go it alone), and took personal pleasure in finishing what they started and performing all tasks to the absolute best of their ability? These traits seem to be the exception rather than the rule in modern times. TL;DR - why isn't it the "norm" that we are mostly all mature and self aware enough that when one of us proposes entering a profession, others do not think to caution that we need to make sure we will put effort in, and perhaps maybe there might be a way ("investing" or non-day trading) to get the results with less work. Do we tell aspiring doctors that actually the profession of healing is a lot of hard work, and maybe it would be better done in a country where there are less medical regulations (ie you can practice without being licensed or accredited) with worse tools and technology than you would find in the west, and if you kill a few poor patients along the way it shouldn't matter because you are unlikely to be sued or prevented from working further. Yet nobody balks when we tell an aspiring trader that perhaps a different "style" might suit them if they are lazy, they can use less money and risk so they can carry on badly for longer, and with affordable consequences for never going anywhere.
If you can survive not losing all your money, the next possible outcome is to make a lot of money, then lose back all your gains. It's very possible to trade and go no where at all for many years. Successful traders are rare birds who can accumulate equity. Futures, with possibility for extreme leverage, offer the fastest way to go broke. Very easy to declare a goal of making $1 million/yr trading, but those individuals are as rare as any job that pays $1 million/yr (think CEO of Krispy Kreme) or any business that can net $1 million/yr profit where you're the 100% owner.
Well, the thread is about giving advice to the OP about his proposed career change. Thus your personal views on work are not the issue here, what matters is OP's specific situation, and so we should tailor advice to his personal motivation, experience, talent etc. OP is considering quitting a low-risk 200k per year salary, in order to chase a much higher-risk and uncertain fluctuating P&L - and his sole reason for doing so is the desire for greater job satisfaction. It is therefore critical that he be sure trading will actually provide that satisfaction. It's a fact that strong interest correlates with performance. OP has also admitted that strong interest is a necessary requirement for his desired career. Yet it's my initial impression that he lacks strong interest in the markets - after all, he admits to not even having placed a trade. To me, he appears to be someone who is pursuing trading as a 'grass is greener' holy grail solution to his current work dilemma, rather than because it is clearly the best career path for him. Before quitting something as difficult to attain as a 200k-1 million salary progression over a decade, he should do some serious self-reflection as to whether trading really is the career for him. Can he honestly say he will enjoy spending the next 10 years staring at blips on a screen, devoid of any human interaction, working solo almost entirely with numbers and a few news headlines? Most people cannot. Will he be fine handling the inevitable mistakes and losses along the way? Many, arguably most people, are poor at managing risk and fluctuations in account equity. Does he even find markets interesting? I often encounter people who find markets very boring. These are the specific issues that matter to OP, and will help determine how well he does, far more so than abstract discussions about duty and work ethic. In fact, your post talks far more about your own preferences, beliefs, and motivations than about the original poster's.
The brutal reality is that the vast majority of small independent traders fail to break-even over their trading careers, let alone make a living from it. And the number that graduate to 1 million a year is very small indeed. Those that do tend to have an unusual aptitude and passion for markets and trading, qualities that are not apparent in OPs two posts so far. We already have some signs of his effort and abilities - he has never even placed a trade, he is seeking out career advice on ET, and he thinks he can replace a steady 200k-1 million low-risk income dollar for dollar with similar gains from trading. If this guy were a stock, he'd be a short.
Mature and self-aware people understand the reality that most beginners don't put the effort in, everyone works harder at things they are passionately interested in, and people who hate their work tend not to achieve abnormal success at it. Hence the focus on such performance-defining characteristics when considering a novice's suitability for the work. You don't have to take my word for it - just review the kind of interview questions that top trading firms ask prospective hires.