I think a good compromise is to find a job that gives one the flexibility to pursue other options (trading or otherwise). There are a lot of full-time software engineering jobs that aren't really "full-time" if you know what you're doing. Many jobs even provide the flexibility of working completely remotely. So if you're really good, you can do actual work one or two days a week and then trade, work on your trade system, mobile phone app, or website the remainder of the week. If you really want to do that, you probably want to work for a large tech company where software engineering managers are promoted basically based on how many people report to them. So they create a lot of bloat by hiring as many people under them as possible. Even better if you can find a manager that doesn't have a background in software so that he doesn't really understand how long it should take to do things. There are many of them in large corporations...you might be surprised. I like this strategy the best because it's kind of the barbell strategy. You don't put everything into job (safety) and you don't put everything into risk. I read a story a couple years ago about an IT guy who actually outsourced his job. It went on for years and he only got caught when the company discovered people connecting to the company via VPN from China. But yes, I don't think it's a good idea to quit job to start trading full time unless you can comfortably retire based on what you have saved up already. Otherwise, it's just way too much pressure to perform.
the ones u know seem to NOT WANNA BE traders like the others who wanna be, what iam saying is the wanna be traders whether they succeed or not usually keep adding money to it cuz they have the illusion that they are gonna win at the specific time period, of course some do some dont, i know i kept adding money to my accounts not just from losses but also to grow it 8 years before i found my way into profitability , at the time of the decision of adding money i thought i was going to make money
2k 3k off what size account?? dont forget to weigh in ur opportunity cost,,, if u have a 300k account and ur making 3k am onth equating to 1% a month which is 12% annually then ur making about as average as the market, except that ur losing!!! what u losing? ur time, which could be translated to money
the best years of profits in percentage or absolute dollars??? i like u quit my job 2010. i only lasted to 2012 then reentered the corporate world and still in, my job makes good money and i have flexibility to check markets if i need to which i dont often cuz i swing trade but the point is iam making much more money in dollars but not in percentage terms from my no job days,, thats why i was asking u i like u re-entered the work force cuz i believe it accelerates the way out of it, now i can be out of it if i want but my goal is 5-8 times my income accounts size before i call it quits on the job, notice i base the account size on my income cuz my income keeps going up thus the account size goes up, i chose it this way so that it stays dynamic, cuz we all know the more u make the more u spend the higher ur life style is....
I agree with all that...I don't disagree that some people perhaps many people can get addicted to gambling the markets. I'm just surprised that there's enough small retail traders to fund the careers of full time traders both independent and those at firms, not to mention other parts of the financial industry. What percentage of the population trades or attempts to become a professional trader? I'd imagine a smaller percentage today than ever before.
yes but its not also directly that way, there is no way to obviously pin point whos winning and whos losing but full time traders making money could make money off of a hedge fund thats having a bad year on the other side of the trade it could be a bank it could be many other variables, there is lots of money in the market and circulates from many direction, i myself used to visualize these things for the sake of interest and simple curiosity i once visualized a scenario which i believe both make money fore example u buy a stock lets say ur the first buyer, u write a call on it, i buy the call, stock goes up, both make money and there we just covered every side of the trade