Great story man, youve been through the ringer and came out on top, must make you feel good, even though there was a lot of suffering to get there. I hear ya man, trading is a tough gig, ive went from boom to bust 3 times, when i started we figured out a ridiculously easy way to rape the dark books, basically we would ping every stock on the market looking for a dark book order, then put a couple thousand shares through it to test it, then you could literally buy as much stock as you wanted, drive the stock up and dump it into the dark book at the top. It was free money, wed make 10-20k on any given day and then go to the bar, which was right below our office, no research, no homework, nothing lol, I was so naieve thought that would last forever, the dark books figured out how bad we were burning them after about six months and they made their algorightms much more complex, so it stopped working, but i kept swinging the same kind of size once it ran out, and bled myself dry. There was times wed have a two to three hundred thousand share position on a 20 dollar stock, now i am biting my nails when i take more than a couple thousand shares, lol so funny how your perspective gets so jaded. Then ended up doing systems trading and was crushing it there again, until my broker stole all my money, lol its always such a humbling experience going from making 4-5 figures on any given trade to back to chipping away at it a few hundred bucks at a time, its always so much easier making money with discretionary trades when you have a reliable system making alot of money every month. You tend to just wait for the best set ups and go all in, cause worst case if you lose the other system will make you the money back tomorrow. So much harder grinding where you rely on every trade for your income, but i hope after being through the cycle a few times ive learned not to take it for granted anymore. Simply put trading is the hardest way to make an easy buck in the world, but i wouldnt trade it for anything, i love waking up every morning and looking at the market, and trying to put the puzzle together. No matter how bad you screw up (provided you dont blow out) you can wipe the slate clean and start fresh tomorrow, wish life was as forgiving as the markets