Oh no you don’t want to ask me lol as I started from the basement lol. And that is partly why I voice strongly against retail trading. Don’t treat it like a business because it’s not lol. I stuck with it long enough thru 2 bear markets and finally gained enough understanding. Like you I am an IT guy with a good income stream. If I know what I know now I would focus on expanding the IT career and just buy all the Qqq I can and hold forever. But to answer your question I am sure there are recruiters out there specializing in this. Also here on ET there is plenty of wisdom on such.
If you want proper experience to make a career out of trading, you need to work at a proper firm: a bank, hedge fund, or prop firm as a front office position. Preferably a firm where you are a cog in the machine. And then be a sponge and learn everything about that machine and everything about the markets you are trading. Then when you are ready, jump ship and start your own thing adapting what you have learned to the platform you can build and run. You will have capital (from your comp) and an inside understanding of the markets. That is the best way to have the highest reward to risk ratio in the career of trading while reducing your opportunity cost and improving your longevity. As a former 21yo with a pretty large ego, I will tell a humbling lesson. Think about your career in your 30s, 40s, and 50s. You can make more money in one year of your 30s as you can in all your twenties combined. You can make more money in one year of your 40s than all your 30s combined. If you manage your career right. Think long term.
OP, Don't know if you're trading stocks or futures, but if you're looking at penny stocks to get started b/c you have little money, like trading the 1st hour of the day for volatility, then you might enjoy keeping an eye on this guy, Ross Cameron. He's "starting over" with a $500 account to grow and will update on his YouTube channel his daily progress. The reality is that he makes millions through his "trading education" services so all this really amounts to for him is advertising for that biz but just ignore all of that and listen to what he says about his ups and downs in his live trading reviews. I believe the dude can trade, even if it is probably helped by front-running his paying peeps. Heck, I don't even trade stocks but I listen to what he goes through and can learn from his mistakes. Well, put it this way, on his bad days, he reminds me to keep on my own straight and narrow with my trading in futures. Here's the 2nd in the series he just posted. It's free. If you like it, keep watching. If you don't, then stop watching. You have so many basics to learn about real-time trading in high volatility that I think you'll be able to relate well to what he's saying. It doesn't matter if your entry technique is different. The thought process of managing good and bad trades is usually very similar. If I were you, I'd follow fan27's advice to get a real job and do trading as a side hustle. You're too young to shut yourself out of the "real world". First job could just be a stepping stone to a more enjoyable one later on. If you amount to anything as a trader, you can always switch to night-time futures trading (note: STAY AWAY FROM FOREX!). The HSI futures (also symbol HHI or their mini contracts at 1/5th the tick value also an alternative for smaller accounts) trade on the Hong Kong Futures Exchange. It is a fantastic trending instrument for North Americans to trade at night while holding down a full-time, normal day job. You know, if I made untold millions in no-market-risk trading education dollars, I could have a sh@t grin on my face every day like ole Ross here too, no matter how bad the actual trading day went. EASY to keep a positive attitude when your day trade profits (from his normal account) are probably 10% or less of your total annual income. Ross's long-term stats are close to 70% winners at an avg win to avg loss ratio very close to 1 (i.e., has to risk $1 to make $1). It won't look like that's what's going on with his trade-by-trade re-caps. The averages tell the REAL story about how you trade. OP, if you actually have a winning trading system and your avg win probability is 40%-60% then your actual avg win/loss ratio will be much higher than Ross's. The more you win on avg, the LESS you will make, on avg, per trade and vice verse. We are bounded by what the bigger players are doing and this is the mathematical relationship which reveals itself to you with decades of experience. When you fully accept this, you will be able to understand where YOUR trading falls in this spectrum of risk/reward (i.e. are you emotionally better at trading a 70% winning system with 1:1 reward to risk ratio or a 40-60% winning system with a range of 1.5x to 2.5x avg win/loss ratio...only you can decide as either system works well in the long-term. And yes, I'm implying that you should stay away from 80% winning systems. You will end up risking $2 for every $1 in gains and one big emotional slip on your part can end you). Yeah Ross, right, you're an Uber driver, trying your best to relate to "the little people", forking out $1000's to you in desperation to make it in day trading. But hey, you just gotta laugh. He has his entertaining moments. Bet a lot of the Gen Z's and Millennials eat this up though.
Even if you take the IT route, go independent. Learn to rely on yourself as that is what most people on here are aiming towards.
This is actually pretty exciting. I'm thinking of joining his chat room and doing the challenge side by side. I am very curious to see how he can control his risk on such a small account with such a volatile strategy. I'm pretty sure I will blow it in the first two weeks If he actually does the challenge using TOS(zero commissions), I will definitely try it!