A recent thread asked how long it took before you became consistently profitable (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=10831). I'm curious how much money it took. For those of you that quit a job to become a trader, how much did you have to save before you felt comfortable taking the plunge? I'm guessing $100,000 would be the minimum ($50,000 for 2 years of bare-bones living expenses and $50,000 to learn how to trade and become profitable). Was anyone here able to do it with a part-time job (before/after market hours) and a $20,000 or $30,000 account?
Totally depends on what you need to live. To trade full time requires that you have two years of income....one to live on, one to trade. Say you need 50K to live on, that is 100K However you can defiantly start with much less to have some fun and profit out of. You can work 3 days and trade 3 days if you have that kind of job until you can make the change. That is doable for a lot of folks. Overnight trades you can hold a full time job and just trade twice a day during a break at work. Or trade the morning pop if you live west and go to work after. I know people who only trade that way. But the first thing you need is some education in the stock market and a lot of paper trading. At least a year IMHO.
I just kept feeding her dollars til shit made cents -- oops I mean sense... get it ----> shit made...
I dropped $100K of my prop firm's money before I became consistently profitable. In all, it took me 2 years to become profitable. Fortunately, I was paid a salary during this time so I could pay my living expenses.
i only lost about $10k of my prop's money the first 6 months, made about $12k the next year, then after that it was high on the hog $$$$!!!!
Took 3Gs of firm money. Then 3 months to get REALLY positive. (and very happy) (check out my CLK thread - that explains my trading).