Do any full time traders have any advice from your experience on how to go full time? when? what goals should I be achieving to work towards it, etc. I am way way far from achieving my earnings I make at my regular job, so this seems like it would be years off from now. I know I need more time trading and more consistency. just looking to have goals for the dream.
When you have enough money in your trading account accumulated from the markets and when your day time job prevents your successful trading. Years from now if ever, sounds likely. Maybe not what you want to hear, but it is the truth.
Are you successful Laissez Faire? I'm asking because you started around the same time I did. At the least I see you're a survivor.
Are you? Not yet, but I don't mind giving an honest answer. I've taken a few jabs at full time trading. The first time I was far from ready and failed massively. The second time I was far more prepared, but not quite enough, I think. That is, I felt I had a really good read on my market and would often make accurate reads as the day progressed. I traded some of those reads very well, but I also traded more than I should have and lost. I blame this mostly on being underfunded and feeling forced to take on more risk than ideal because I had to make huge returns just to live. Just being up for the day wasn't enough. There was also a bit too much subjectivity in my method, i.e., interpretation of charts and not enough rules. So, I quit and decided to get an university degree while maintaining my market studies. A few years later, now, I'm working a full time job as an engineer and I am slowly finalizing a trading approach that I've worked on for many years now. I'm going to start trading it very soon and I'm confident that I have something that will work this time. It's quite an improvement from what I did the last time around. More professional. Less subjective. Living in Europe, I have the advantage of being able to trade the last 4 hours of the US session while maintaining my day time job. So, no pressure to make a killing this time.
There is a book, from early 2000's that might help. In fact, it's the only reason I would recommend this particular book. It was helpful for me for exactly the same reason(s). The book is "Rule the Freakin Markets" by Michael Parness. The first several chapters as I recall, address the factors, from a practical view, not skill, that is required. I would not pay much for the book nowadays... it's likely available used, for small change, or through a torrent for even less than that.
I was making +200k in my old job but had an injury which coincided with being relatively free to move and do what I wanted. So I found a country that was high quality but inexpensive so my savings would last years living very well and focusing 16-18 hours a day for 18 months or so. I got enough focused study in to shred any futures instrument that took my fancy. Career break, somewhere nice and commit.
I'm getting ready to unleash the Holy Grail, which was what I was trying to achieve from the start. The irony is that I already had the right rules and ideas from year 1 but for some reason I kept trying to make it more complicated then it really need to be. 2017 was a breakthrough year. Going back to the old ideas was what brought things together. You could probably call this going "full circle" Anyway, glad to see you're still around.
this is my issue as well. I am not bragging , but I do make over 5 figures per month in my regular job. so, how the heck do I get to a point to replace that? I always thought that answer was the scalability of trading. I trade NQ and ES Futures,,, so I figure if I can trade small lots of 2-4 contracts successfully, then it is just a matter of scaling up.
Don't really know what to tell you. If it's your dream, then keep trying. But there's no guarantee you'll figure it out. Without knowing the details about you or your system, it's hard to say.
The math is simple, when trading 10 lots like they are 1 you won't be questioning it. Do or do not, there is no try etc. To quote Yoda from bizarre bagpipe lady here. Most can't rise to it because they never performed in any job, burger flippers dreaming of infinity pools. They are liquidity providers. (Unless they are the very best burger flippers on the world). It will be a lot of work but it can be done. Better to have 30-50k seed of course.