Sounding good. But....... The amount of money your making is going to be high risk which will bite you on the ass sooner or later then your out of a job again so... So what you need to do, is create a rescue account, you blow it up, you've got money after a cool down period you can re add and back making money again. So greed in check, take 50% of your account out and out it somewhere safe, then in future. Add to it, try to keep emergency account the same as trading, so make 1k take 500 wage, put 250 into emergency, account is up 250 still. Then rock on, with the comfort of money safely in your bank.
Jinxu. I don't think you are just lucky. You have been doing this for awhile and everything you said in your post makes sense. Your psychology was also good in not trading with expectation, etc. There are countless traders who say it took 5 - 7 years before they get the experience of rules that are working in sync with psychology. Depression just is what it is. Only you know exactly how it works for you. The discipline of trading, and the way it makes one pay attention (yet without expectation, as you put it) may help you. All the best to you.
Get professional help for your depression first because eventually it will begin impacting your trading and you don't want that to happen. How much to live on is determine by your location of residence, debts and such.
Here's an article on this that nearly ever pro trader would agree with> https://www.thebalance.com/is-it-possible-to-trade-commodities-for-a-living-809214
I am just a retail trader so my opinion is that of a non professional: Trading as investing, i.e., leveraging on compounding your win is a lot easier than trading for a living and relying on wins to live on. When you have to take money out every month, there is less downside cushions for the occasional draw downs so the probability of wipe out is much higher. You can run a Monte Carlo assuming different level of winning percentage, different level of taking money out every month and see your probability of wipe out. I don't think you will like your odds.
Complete nonsense. $1500 is less than 2 ES points avg a day on a ONE lot. I know you've written a book and what not but some of the stuff you say just doesn't add up.
Yes it's luck... if you can lose 75% of your account, you are probably trading way too big in leverage for your account... How much do you need to earn as a trader... (or more to the point, as any worker/employee)... that depends on your expenses. But like GAT says, 5k is totally inadequate to provide income... because when you trade with so much leverage, you will hit a bump again and lose massively...