To me, I just like the fact that I can make money when I am proven right. That's the biggest high that I get from trading I think.
Fully automated but my code base is quite large and ironically, I still monitor the automation the open when I have most activity, guess I should automate the automation monitoring (...). Automation that performs not only trade placement but margin optimisation, multi-strategy adjustment etc. is hard to implement flawlessly because the number of possible exceptions is large and there are regulatory changes which cannot be foreseen, like the PTP regulation implemented recently.
I appreciate all of your responses. Glad that many of you genuinely enjoy trading and the analysis behind it. Ultimately, I think I just need a break and take things down a notch. Re-charge the batteries. It's still unclear to me whether or not trading is something I'm meant to be doing, but the only way I can find out is through more experience and time. I've just been getting these nagging inner questions lately saying "is this what your meant to be doing?", "are you really as passionate as you think you are about this?" It's hard to ignore them. It feels like the universe or something is trying to signal something to me.
I really don't know. Unlike others, I've never been truly obsessed (in the good way) about a field of work. It could be I just don't give things enough time and don't plan well. Before I got into finance and trading, I was learning how to program for months. I found it decently enjoyable and rewarding, and I've always been into computers ever since I was a kid. But then I stopped not because it became more challenging or stalled progress, but because finance and trading just kept speaking to me more and more, and I wanted to give it my full devotion. You can't be a jack of all trades, it's got to be 1 thing. Maybe programming, or computer security is that thing. I'll find out eventually. Having said all this, programming and finance/trading are probably the 2 fields that have stuck the most for me personally.
Many years ago I attempted to automate futures trading, but the combination of IB and Sierrachart was a fiasco for me, it was too buggy and time consuming. I recall feeling very stressed, it was just a bad fit, when I went back to stocks the stress disappeared. So, perhaps consider whether it's not so much trading, but the type of trading. If you feel the tempo of trading, how much it involves is too much, that may be the issue.
Don't worry. Everybody's has been there and done that at some point of their trading career, including yours truly, many many times during my trading career. The thing is you can't think of trading as a hobby; you have to think of it as a business. What you are saying is absolutely correct, in essence, no matter how you enjoy the process, the analysis, the learning and etc. if you can't make money at the end, everything is moot. Making money is a HUGE part of trading. Trading is more entrepreneurial than we all expect so a better question to ask yourself is do you enjoy making money directly by trading or do you enjoy just the process of it? If you just enjoy the analysis work, the process, the learning, then you might enjoy your career more as a financial or investment analyst rather than a trader. But having said that, mind you, you WILL enjoy making money more once you start to make money. LOL It really gives you a high when everything is all working out. You will still lose from time to time (I lost 25% of my trading capital at one time, NOT a fun day), but just the feeling of confidence that you can do it, you are able to make money will carry you through the losses and give you the strength to go on. The more profit you make, the easier it gets.