Grey: You have to sacrifice SOMETHING to get a nice home and a nice bank account, in your ex-case, it was private time and personal life. You made the type of money you made, because you put in those hours, nothing is free in life, nothing is easy, and no one has the PERFECT job, everything comes with its pro's and con's. But you can not ignore the fact that the money you made at your IBank career probably gave you a lot of cushion when you entered day trading, more cushion than say a fresh college grad would have. I am also curious if you have exceeded the income you made at your IBank job. I know income is not the only factor when you already have a lot, when you have nothing however, it is THE factor. It is very easy to say "oh I don't want this kind of stress and I want to spend more time with my family" when you have a six figure bank account and a nice home fully paid for. Many people don't have that choice.
You guys have a good point. Receiving a high salary with bonuses and no time outside of the the job is not worth it at least in the long run (money is not going to bring all the happiness).
Money can buy some happiness. When I first came to this country, my family barely had anything. We didn't even have furniture in our first apartment. Things are much better now and I've got a shot at real trading success. This is because of one thing: money. Money lets you buy nice things. It allows you to help others. Chicks like guys with money better than guys with none. People with money get respect and are treated better (just look at all the special treatment OJ got). So money does buy some happiness.
The funny thing about money is that when you don't have any, you think money is the key to all your problems. But then when you actually start accumulating large amounts of wealth, you realize there is so much more to life. Unfortunately, very few people realize this without going through the entire process. Its kinda like a lesson that everyone tells you, but you can't figure it out until you experience it for yourself.
What a great thread. I've been trading for over 4 years now, pretty succesfully. At times I wanted to go back and get an MBA at night. I love this job, but wanted to get an MBA for several reasons. One, I have a lot of free time, and I don't think I use it productively. Two, I felt my learning curved has flattened out and I'm hungry to learn something new. Three, I was hoping I could learn something useful in school, and apply it to the financial markets, and make more money. After doing some research, and finding out the costs of Grad school, and that it is not tax deductible, and further talking to some professors who teach these MBA programs, found out and got very dissapointed. I concluded that I will most likely will not learn anything of value to a daytrader or even equity trader. In finance and more specific investment classes they still teach that markets are efficient, and teach modern portfolio theory, and CAPM, WACC, etc... I was wondering if any of you have any info regarding a school program where one could learn practical stuff and methods and would be able to apply them to daytrading. I'm not talking about technical analysis. It could be hedging strategies, as well as all kinds of markets, equity, debt, derivatives, etc... The fact is, that I would love to learn something new, but don't want to waste my time learning about corporate finance, etc..... Also a question for Hitman. Do you know what does an average trader at Worldco makes? Are there any numbers? It's really hard to know how well you are doing, because you don't know what others make. Just curious if they let you know what the averages are. Thanks
The average doesn't mean anything, because 80% of the money goes into the hands of 20% of the players. That said, based on what I have seen in my firm: I would say 100K a year is the line in the sand that separates those who have truly arrived and those who haven't. Only then one can call him/herself a profitable day trader. Anything less, you are taking too much risk and not getting enough reward in your career. 250K a year, and you can call yourself a very good day trader. 500K a year, and you can call yourself an exceptional day trader. Seven figures and beyond, you can call yourself a legend. Keep in mind tho, using the above standard, I would say only 15-20% of the traders at my firm fall into the above four categories. 50% are negative, 20% don't make more than McDonald's, 10-15% don't make much more than your typical college grad, then you have the big four . . .
Check out the financial engineering program at Carnegie Mellon. It should be under their grad school section. Also, there is one at Oregon.