what happens when that 1 or 2 months profit is enough to retire you and your broker? Question: move on, or continue trading? If continue trading, then try and make more, or continue as before? If move on, then use trading as a profit hedge with puts, or have some kind of annuity / max out 401k / max out IRA ?
If you trade solely a short-term method with a genuine edge (e.g. scalping an inefficient market) then winning every month for a long time is definitely achievable, without taking undue blowup risks. However, eventually you will either lose discipline and average down in a one-way trend day, run into a 9/11 scenario, or something like that, and then if your day is bad enough and the rest of the month sucks, you might have a losing month. I don't think that kind of consistency is achievable for longer-term methods. Also, it's not the most profitable approach. Maximising profits means taking attractive long-term trades on decent size, and if one of them is a loser on size than it can easily swamp your months' scalping profits.
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>>what happens when that 1 or 2 months profit is enough to retire you and your broker?>> I think this is unrealistic, due to limitations of trading instruments. In futures scalping (my game), a trader can only move so many contracts per trade, even with scaling in/out, and even the exchanges have limits on the number of contracts that can be moved in each trade. At some point, volume becomes limited and you will find a maximum to the number of contracts you can get filled at with acceptable slippage, after which comes a point of diminishing returns where you actually SEE your trade move the markets. THAT IS BAD. Others can see YOU, and then YOU become part of the game other traders try to figure out and predict. At that point, you would be moving tens of thousands of emini contracts per trade on the ES, or 50 per trade on the NQ/ER2/YM, etc. >>Question: move on, or continue trading? If continue trading, then try and make more, or continue as before? If move on, then use trading as a profit hedge with puts, or have some kind of annuity / max out 401k / max out IRA ?>> I always look for a better system than mine. I have tried everything out there via simulator. PureTick, PageTrader, everything I could find. I always come back to my own system because I know that nobody can close a room... retire... give their members to another trader... increase their monthly fee... nobody can affect the stability of my trading but ME. But regarding longevity... one element of successful trading is limit your risk, limit your market exposure. That is why I enjoy scalping, as I make my day's worth of killing in about ten minutes of exposure. I wouldn't trade overnight if you paid me to worry about what happens while I sleep. And stocks? zzzzzzzzzzzzz... Get your money and get out of the market. Other traders are always willing to take it back from you (they think about revenge trades too), should you feel so foolish, er I mean itching to trade after you're already up. As for retirement planning, read Dave Ramsey's book on money.