You either worked in an essential job to be working in April or you were working at home ? If working at home, I would have continue working and trading unless you're from Sweden (they didn't close shop). wrbtrader
Yes. It was an essential job, but I'm just done with working. It's way too slow. I'm working from home from now on.
You gotta be careful, more careful than normal due to the unusual market conditions. Its very seductive...people see those big swing days and think they can capture a little of it consistently. Simply, there's going to be a ton of stories about margins calls, nice surprises (e.g. negative oil prices), vaccine positive results stories that's going to whipsaw many into blow ups. Thus, I feel sorry for any one quitting something that's their security and then trying to make trading their number #1 job unless the timing was just coincidental with them being properly capitalized plus a year of savings and they have health insurance setup (we are in a Pandemic) for the worst case scenario and then there's the issue that they have already good real money trading results leading up to quitting the job. Like @destriero stated, the first year will be tough even if you had all the above and then if you do survive the first year...still no guarantee you'll make it past the 2nd year because crazy shit always happen. Hope you make it because trading is a tough gig to manage right now during a Pandemic as your primary source of income. wrbtrader
Frankly, flipping single wide traders would almost certainly have a higher chance of success than either opening a restaurant or quitting a 'real' job in order to start day trading full time.
A few years back, on several of his posts @Handle123 mentioned he "danced options" around his long term holdings to juiced returns, and that included both long and short. Up until then, I wrote covered calls on my long term holdings and used standard screening criteria from my broker's platform to find trades. I was all over the place and did poorly. Knowing one of the elite posters used a certain approach helped me focused and that turned things around. To you professionals and experts, it was obvious but to a struggling newbie it made a world of difference, cutting down on lots of trial and error. Is he the real deal, I don't know, but I am grateful for his posts. Would I have changed without reading his posts? I will never know. Most likely I would have gone a different way.