first, if you work for someone, you shouldnt be trading at work, thats not fair to your employer. not coincidentally, both your work & trading will suffer anyway. if you can follow an EOD swing trading strategy and allow for a check of positions at lunch, then that might work. i might also suggest you learn to play opening gaps - "Trader X" has a blog and he and his crew just trade opening gaps - you could trade until work starts and then put in a OCO order for profit target & stop loss. if you can work as a consultant or get contract work, that might be the ticket, you can work around trading hours. you are young and single and im pretty sure that even though great jobs are hard to find and may be even more scarce in the future, if you decide to go back to work after trading for a spell, you will be able to land something. you can live cheaply as a single guy. please consider that as most people age, their options narrow, so if you are having doubts at 25 yo, what do you foresee at 35 yo with a wife & 2 young children to care and provide for and a mortgage to pay? i posted here years ago on this subject and they ran me off, thats okey, i stuck to my plan. i own my own job (business) and i have only been working 8-9 months a year for past 2-3 years. i have 2 children to put through college and a medical issue, so im afraid to entirely let go of my biz just yet. i earn very good money in my profession but im kinda done with it, and i can always go back, although i will be less "connected", so ill earn less. if one of my children care to take it over, they can step right in, so im coaxing it along. im debt free with a healthy net worth and i have been increasing my passive income over the past 2-3 years. make no mistake, it takes time to move stuff around, not to mention opportunity costs, commissions, costs and yes, taxes. also, yields have been crappy, so it takes patience and displine to get a good yield w/o exposing capital to too much risk. luckily, i can trade most every day and work at night & evenings, or trade until 9 am or so *NY lunch); and ive 22 years experience in my profession, so im pretty efficient when i do work. i am out of the office on average 1 day a week, but i usually try to make it sat/sun. so far this year, my trading income has been greater than my work income and i had planned to stop working in june, but i think ill take it thru the summer doldrums and stop in august (after a ski trip to chile). i have had 2 slow work months this year, which i attribute in part to losing touch a bit with my cleints as my sabbaticals increase and to my waining motivation. i clients i am taking time off, i do not lie to them, perhaps this is a mistake? also, i have gotten pickier abut the assignments i accept, so i produce more per hour, but work less, so my bottom line suffers - my life, however, has not suffered at all. one last point. i have a buddy who worked a municipal job into his 50's, then retired to a resort area and pursued his dream of trading. he has been diagnosed AGAIN with the same life threatening disease and he may not make it this time. he spent 50+ years in an area he didnt love, working a job he was ill-suited- for and reached his dream for about 1 year. please do not assume that you have an eternity to follow your dreams; do not live life pretending that "its just temporary, that one day ill be a successful trader"; and whatever you decide, do not live your life in fear of failure and ruled by fear. signed, Father Time
QQQBALL, thanks for the advice. Just so you know, I don't spend every working hour trading. I never have to since my timeframes are by the months. I've always given 110% effort to my day job, else I wouldn't have had it for the past 4 years.
Try contract or consulting work. You work for a set amount of time and then when you get that "real job" feeling out of your system you get back to trading. Its usually much easier for an EE to get a temporary job than a full time one. Even if its just drawing up some circuit diagrams for a corporate project it gets you out of the house.
Please don't do it. Until your home is all paid for, your cars, your kids educations are all taken care of. Your family health benifits and insurance etc., kepp your day job. You'll very guilty quitting something people out there yearns for. Easy come easy go.
Amen to this. Unless you have 2 million bucks to start. I don't see a stable income to trading to sustain a stable life. If you are single forever, no commitments, the only monthly bills you have to pay for is $200 in food, $50 internet, $200 gas, used beat up car doesn't cost much in terms of basic liabilty car insurance, gas, electricity, water in a room to rented somewhere in the midwest, maybe, just maybe, you can start making THIS type of poverty level living with about $25K of trading. "Taking money off your trading capital to fund your living ALMOST CERTAINLY spells failure. Unless, you have a huge capital to start." Couldn't be said better.
Thanks for this. I made a mistake letting my friends and family know about my trading, and the kinda of money I was making. All of a sudden I was invited to all kinds of party. People looked at me differently. They treated me nicely because they think they could get stock tips from me. And when the market turns, I got caught, inexperienced, I got wiped out the first time. Boy, you could really the laughters in everyone's face, and sarcarsm I get to hear. Some was even rude to me, all the backstabbing I got. From then on ... noone knows about what I do ... But the Mercedes I bought recently got them very suspicious.
You never know, it migth not be the trading money, but it could be the stock options you are allocated from those tech co's you work for that will make you rich. Chances are, if you throw your degree away, you will regret. Of course, you could be the next Bill Gate in trading ...
Does anybody still give stock options to EE's. I know some companies will pay your fees for an L-1 or H1-B visa if you're from India, but with the amount of so called EE's coming from India and China with their "degrees" from "private technical institutes" (diploma mills) the supply of tech people is too high for stock options.