Traded and conducted investment research for a living from 1994 - 2002. Then from 2002 - 2010, put a few thousand research hours into a more reliable, intermediate term "investing" model using QQQ, VBR, sector funds which has produced risk mitigated alpha with a fraction of the transactions and screen time hours that trading took up. Looking to hopefully develop it into a disruptive technology ( compete with robo advisors ) via web based app ...
I swing trade full time, just in my fourth year now. First two and half years were very good, the last six months, well, not so good. Moving ahead, I've made the adjustments and look foreword to an excellent fourth. Can't think of anything else I'd rather do.
That's so true life wisdom. -- Prior to trading, I tried various web businesses...all failed horribly. computer repair. studied gemology. got certs for all of those. even dabbled in being a real estate agent at one short point. did some ebay sales too. even studied to become a travel agent at one point lol. etc misc jobs. (i'm a college grad, but barely graduated from an average school, so i'm not exactly in high demand.) ...Then the 2008 crash arrived, and made big news practically daily. -- i was hooked and explored it. i just kind of picked up this trading world relatively easily. -- you can almost say it's my calling. i love trading...everything i did prior made me feel like a zombie.
Much of corporate America is like that today: zombie-like. There are so many marginal people in positions of power at these large companies. Of course, many got their jobs from friends or acquaintences there. One thing you want to avoid today is joining a company where you know no one.
My long range plan was (and still is) 3 pronged: 1. to earn income from my RIA business 2. own some unrelated business (such as laundromat) to diversify & help during lean periods 3. daytrade my own money to make steady income Item 1: is in effect and has been generating income for many years. Hope to grow it back to previous glory. Item 2: I need to do further due diligence and get off my a$$ and just do it. Item 3: I have been doing this for several years now with a portfolio of short term strategies that I only trade for myself - these strats trade individual stocks with intraday holding perods. The Sharpe ratio is still good (above 3.0) but performance has flattened out since late summer. So it is not generating steady income. From this thread so far I see the following people trade for a living (in no particular order): @d08 @sellindexvol66 @dealmaker @lawrence-lugar @Buck I am curious how you guys are trading in order to make a living off it. Are you able to be profitable every month? every week? What class of strategy are you doing? I suspect mostly selling premium? Anything else?
I don't trade options. Multiple classes of strategies. Ideally I would trade all instruments and all strategies for added diversification. The key is not to be closed minded because whatever works, works. I quite often have losing months and I believe I've had a few losing quarters - I don't keep very precise stats as I don't think it helps with performance. The key is keeping your spending low so that you never worry about having enough resources for basic expenses.
I translate written text for living. Literature, books. But my main source of income is long term investing. Netflix, for the most part.