Full-time trade is mostly when you are employed by hedge fund or investment company or bank. Full-time trading means you compete with those behemoths that have resources, money, brains etc. Extremely hard to beat them consistently
Reminds me of when I tried to learn from Warren Buffet's books many years ago. He violates every one of his rules except one - always have an inside man amongst the board of directors. Inside trading (ahem, investing) is right there in black-and-white. But, of course, only small-fish trading OTM options in auntie's account get caught.
I think the boredom part of it is a good thing. It means you have specific setups you're looking for and you're not trading if you don't see them. If you're a discretionary trader, just trading from the gut or whatever, then you need to sit and stare all day every day for whenever a "signal" presents itself. But that's never worked for me.
Waiting .... Staring at the screens for ~ 2 hours / session ..... is not easy even though I keep myself fit and healthy and do various mind exercises. Humans are naturally impatient.
I have never even considered full-time trading, can't imagine the stress. How it would change my attitude is just scary to me.
It can become boring at times but never as death (assuming you know that death is boring LOL). There is always something for you to do in trading, analyzing news and economic situation, going back on trading performance to see if it can be improved and etc.. Yes. You are always on edge because anything can happen at any time. No. LOL
Here is the paradox. If you are rich enough to pay your monthly nut from rents or bond coupons, then you wouldn't need to trade as you have enough to go by. Those of us who are trading or trying to trade full-time are doing so because we are not rich enough to pay our monthly nut from rents or bond coupons. We need to trade to make enough to pay our monthly nut. LOL It takes money to make money but then if you do have money, then you wouldn't need to make money that urgently. That's the great paradox.
Thanks everyone. I get the impression unless you're really good, don't even think about going full time? It's lonely, stressful and harder than Chinese Algebra competing against the Institutions long term.
I believe that you can do it full time if you have a well rounded skillset. But you need to be your own Market Strategist, Risk Management Department, Software/IT Development team, Quantitative and Chart analyst all operating as a one man show. AI tools definitely help. They say that 1 Billion dollar companies run by 1 person using mostly AI Agents are going to be commonplace in the future. I don't see why that model wouldn't be particularily common in the Trading/hedge fund industry.
Solution is to focus on constraints that those giants have (regulatory, mkt size, corporate bureocracy, etc.) this creates market niches where you can stay competitive