Yes I was wondering what I couldn't find the words to type what i was thinking, cause this guy already did it. Good post. Well put.
Once you can trade profitably, well my experience, is that I do all that I can to spend LESS time trading. It's already systematized, so no reason to spend more time trading. The time away from trading is for recharging. It has nothing to do with being smart...in trading smart enough is ok. Entry criteria intelligence is not excellence criteria. It how smart you work. The market doesn't know how much time you spend trading, and if it did...it woudln't give a rat's ass. Like in most endeavors, 20% of your time will yield 80% of your results. I know many many other traders who are better than me, and they in fact do trade only in the first two hours of the day, then in fact they do play golf, or other things. I am still learning to trade less, because trading less for me means more money in general to a point. There is nearly zero correlation with hours trading spend during the day and profit. I believe the same is true of after hours or before hours prep work. In developing a system, yes, maybe if you are creating it to your personality it could take years lots of hours. Once it is done, you just have to operate it. This idea that great traders spend 12 hours a day working is utter nonsense for many very profitable traders. Making money trading is both time and after fees are recovered, equity invariant.
Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the progress here. I am still working but more than likely I will be done with this job by June. I showed my wife my past results and numbers as well as the current balance in my trading account. She has seen the light now that a peson can actually make money trading. She has agreed that when my current job ends I should go full time trading. I guess all I had to do to curb her doubts about trading was to show her the money. Thank you to everyone who offered input here along the way.
Wish you the very best Hardo. One thing is for sure when someone has traded live for a while,it gets into your blood as an acquired skill just like riding a bike. It may remain dormant for a while but when needed comes back all of a sudden. Cheers, Max
I'm sorry, but this guy deserved what he got. Making $750k a year and only $500k in savings? There's obviously some very very bad money management going on. He said himself that he didn't care what anything cost he just put in the cart. And the $30k a year private school tuition? That's not doing the kids any favor, they'll just grow up to be irresponsible brats.
Key question, to me, is what you would do for health insurance. Imagine that you don't have insurance and one of your kids becomes ill (god forbid) - how would you handle that? That's the real risk that you have to measure and have a plan for. Good luck!
Kids are pretty resilient. Seriously though, if you want to trade full time, you should consider moving away from the US. You can get better health care at a fraction of the cost, and health insurance is also much cheaper. You can buy life and health insurance, just like you would if you worked at a company, only better. You can also go somewhere with a much lower cost of living, that will help. The easiest way to convince your wife to let you trade full time is to be successful at it. I'm sure she won't have a problem with you making milliions.
Never had an issue with that. It's pretty easy to justify it because most people would love to make hundreds to thousands of dollars per day BUT in reality most people cannot deal with the day-to-day constant risks associated with the POSSIBLE rewards of active trading. I think when you're doing well, it's important to stay grounded somehow...I think donating time is a good idea as opposed to money however -- but to each his own.