Wish you the best Redneck but trading is no "job" in my opinion. You do not get paid for time you earn a profit or loss. It is entrepreneurial not a "job".
Point taken Sir eta - And that is how I view my LLC I trade under... But my day trading (to me) is how I described it Take Care RN
Trading is scalable. If one can make 50K per year consistently with good risk profile then IMO he will make 500K with exact same amount of effort. The capital will not be the problem for such trader. Plenty if capital out there. I don't believe that a trader will consistently make only 50K year in and year out trading. It has to be some type of a weirdo doing that. The only way to scale a doctor/technician work is to become a businessman and have 100 doctors/technicians work for you. And doctor/technician is alot of work, without guarantee of stable income.
I wonder why about the above statement by you college_trad3r. Perhaps this is what they teach in beginner trading classes - Stay away from the market when the market is chopping. But to be successful at trading for living, you must be able to trade, day in day out, in any condition. Imagine if Pete Sampras or Roger Federer would only play tennis on hard surface but not clay court or grass court... There are just different tactics in different trading environments. When trading in chopping conditions, fade the extremes. Have the discipline to stop out and flip if/once the market transitions into a trending condition intraday.
capital is a big problem it was just an example. You realize you have to make over $1000 a trading day just to make the same amount of money that somebody who just went to regular college made? It means you have to make $2000-$5000 every trading day just to start getting rich at all. It's all basic math, can you imagine making $5000 a day, trading, most cant even manage $5000 a month
This statement is somewhat misleading although I do understand what you're saying. There are traders that know the markets well enough in that they pick favorable trading conditions to trade instead of trying to hammer at it every trading day, every trading hour or every trading minute when market conditions may not be favorable. For example, if you know your method does not perform well in tight trading ranges that's full of chop... There's no need to trade in it when you recognize such as it is occurring unless you intentionally want to increase the odds of losing money. A good trader will wait until the markets is favorable for his/her method. Now getting back to the tennis analogy...they are obligated to play on different types of surfaces via contracts with sponsors and/or to maintain their rankings. Traders do not have such nor do we get rewarded for trading in environments not suitable for our trade strategies. Yet, if you're one of the few traders that has a method that can exploit all types of market conditions along with being able to be consistently profitable... Congrats, it'll be the first time I've heard of such because the traders I know that profitably trade for a living know when to trade and know when not to trade. Mark
I think trading is a "job" in that the same amount of (or typically more) effort is required compared to holding a salary job. I think it is not easy, contrary to what most people tend to imagine, to make good money trading part-time - such as trading a couple of hours a day day-trading before work or after work with an eye on the market in between. The thing is most of the times the markets tend to run away (and you miss the opportunity or get stopped out) while you are engaged in or are away for a meeting or running errands or one thing or another. The window to react is about 15 to 30 minutes intraday usually and they typically come only twice or max three times a day. If you miss, you miss. Sometimes miss big. People say: oh I have my stops to protect me. Yes this is very true. It's protection. But from my experience the markets have funny ways of taking out your stops and faking the moves against you first, then move in favor of your direction big time. Oh you were stopped out, and stayed out (unless you have placed limit orders to re-enter at lower prices and they get hit)... oh well, the market train took off without you. The intraday hick ups caused by something like the Fed interest rate decisions are typical of these kinds of waves. And the latest example is last Thursday 7/30/09, the last hour, the market reversed from moderately bullish to dropping fast and nothing could hold it back for 30+ minutes. If you had been there you might be able to react and flip positions. But if you were not there... oh well... perhaps you are very experienced and would know exactly how to re-enter and have set up many limit orders and stop orders to buy/sell exactly the way you want while you are out playing golf. Trading is not a "job" in that one is not paid automatically like a salary job. If you work at Starbucks pouring coffee, you get $X/hour whether there is any customer walks in the door or not. When one trades for a living: no trade, no risk taking, no income. If you trade, you may or may not generate income. If you don't trade, guaranteed no income.
Yes. Sorry college_trad3r and Mark (NihabaAshi). You both are right. Trading capital and trading styles would influence whether you trade in a certain environment or not. We traders have the luxury of sitting on our hands. But I think to make a living from trading alone, and especially practising day-trading, leaving out 50 days out of roughly 250 (1 in 5) can be improved. Most shops and restaurants stay open in early and late hours, even knowing that they don't do much businesses for them in those hours. They still conduct businesses as a way of getting small revenues to help footing the bills.