fireplace, i wish you well and hope you continue as a successful trader. i was a trader and now own my own business and i can tell you with the utmost certainty, owning a business is MUCH easier.
Trading is fairly easy for me now, I just have to wait until my setups occur and trade them the way I am supposed to based on my system design. Sure, it didn't start off easy, took a couple years to get fully going but that was a decade ago. I am an extremely disciplined person by nature so I never had the issue of losing discipline in my trading. My conservative nature helped me through the learning years and now I have all the pieces to the puzzle I need to catch intraday turning points in futs and etfs consistently. The only tough part is the sitting and waiting, and that is mostly just tough on my back! LOL Congrats on your business success outside of trading.
It seems to me that the very shot-term market is getting ever more competitive and therefore efficient, as software catches up and exchange membership is no longer required to realize extremely cheap trading. Spreads and local volatility are collapsing. Even some formerly successful HFT's are bowing out now -- and not due to a spectacular bust, but rather due to day-in, day-out reduced profitability. But that's mostly in reference to the very-short-term, quant-driven aspects of the market.
Bella may be a marketer for its 10k training program for dreaming prop traders. I trust Bella as much as I trust Oliver Velez.
retail access to listed markets is basically a welcome sign hung over an asshole. you're just as likely to climb through a manhole, navigate a sewer to the mailroom of a skyscraper, get engaged to a tycoon's daughter and inherit his fortune.
With such exceptional perception and admission.... it is best that you leave trading to someone else whose outlook and attitudes are somewhat different from yours. I for one am glad that you quit while you are still able to afford a somewhat normal life style. As for many of us who believe otherwise, we'll also go happily our different ways and directions to whatever pits that entice us the most and challenge our skills to the extreme. Wish you the best in life as well.
I found your post about managing a business interesting. What if one isn't that smart and aggressive? Would one be better off trying to trade than competing in the small business arena? Having worked in a small business sweatshop I learned enough about how the owner/ceo handled his business that he used whatever unfair advantages and loopholes he could i.e like using subpar parts, having access to immense shared family wealth, hiring college degree kids even some from top 5% universities, for close to McDonald's wages, hardly ever acqueising to refunds except refer to distributors or suggest a return replacement. The business had put others out of business over the years. They were also burglarized several times, or robbed at gunpoint by gangs hired by competitors in the past also. Tried to skimp out on security. Now a part time security guard for the night shifts. But for me I could never have his smarts or gunho aggresive qualities. So far I'm having much more fun trying to trade. I would be devastated if I lost $600k like Hood. But haven't we all learned the risk only %5 for each trade rule or something like that?
<b>Quote from Roark: This is what Bella of SMB Capital wrote about day trading as a dead end job: In your life you get very few opportunities to do something great. This is one such opportunity. Most in the world are in dead end jobs. This is never one of those jobs. In One Good Trade (Wiley Trading) I created a fictional character in Why Traders Fail who enters the game of trading for the coolness of it all. This character daydreams telling a young lady what he does and her disinterest instantly turning to total interest. Let me be clear, this is exactly what will happen. Other than playing CF for the New York Yankees or being a rock star nothing is cooler than being a professional trader. You will learn more about yourself in a year of trading than working for twenty years at never-challenge-me corporation. Learning to successfully navigate the markets is the Mount Everett of your professional life. </b> I totally agree with with Bella. However, unfortunately, most here are on the wrong track, living in delusion, and will never really understand how markets really work. It's very clear from their posts and language despite the content. But if you can on your own, or via a mentor, prop shop or whatever, learn true edge--- he is 100% correct.