I am living on the cheap- house paid for, no debt at all. My fixed costs to maintain the house (Taxes,insurance & utility bill) is only 2000 dollars a year. I am single with no dependents (other than six dogs & two cats). My expenses are very low. Right now I am not employed so I can give trading my full attention. I just started in June with live trading, breaking even so far but learning from my mistakes. I am trading small right now focusing on options exclusively.
These are VERY BIG assumptions. The vast majority of traders will be well into years 5, 6, 7 ... before finally figuring out how absolutely difficult longterm, lucratively profitable trading is. And they may say "this year, I am finally profitable, before the following year(s) realizing they were fortunate that year, rather than profitable.
yah 10,000 hours screen time to qualify - 8hrs a day * 250 days a year * 5 years. I admit I was in some deep dark holes along the way, but being a stubborn f**ker I only learnt from my mistakes. GL !
I've heard of the 10,000 hrs/5 yrs rule before, and yes, it makes sense. The question is what kind of pressure should you put on yourself to get to that level? If you are a 100% trader, that is you have no other occupation but that, then you have the pressure to be profitable to make the bills, and you at least partially lose the benefit of compounding. If you divide trading and some other paying profession, then it will take you longer to lock in those 10,000 hours because you're not trading as much and your focus is divided amongst many different things. The big question here comes where is the risk/reward better?
true. People think it is much easier to spend a couple hundred for a trading book and get rich trading, rather than spending 6-7 years to get an advanced degree and spend all that time and money. Anything that is lucrative usually takes a lot of time, money and effort. Otherwise everyone would be doing it (and not just selling books and systems).
I see the point in that. The problem is that from a practical point of view, you need to live somehow when you're learning to become profitable. If you're starting a regular mom n' pop type of store, you usually should be able to see some positive earnings come in within a year. I've often heard that a trader is usually given one year to demonstrate that they can produce a profit. If not, they should do something else with their lives. I heard also about the 10,000 hour rule. That says you need to spend 5 years in the pits (real or virtual) before you can say that you're really in business. The problem them becomes - how do you pay your bills? Okay, you can live in your folks' home, you can have a working spouse, or you do something on the side that pays you just enough to keep the lights on and a plate of grits to keep you filled. With any part time job, either you work hard and get paid well (and your trading suffers) or you work little and get paid peanuts (which means you're going to have to live super frugally). Does anyone have any ideas as to how to balance this out?