Risk for OP is that trading may never materialize to be a successful business adventure. So far I haven't seen any strong indication that he is even close. He is close to the 10-20 year of experience. And it sound like he is still in the development state. This is the tradeoff for the OP. The time he is spending on trading could have been used to invest in other business venture. Maybe even personal ones. Trading is not that interesting unless you're making money.
Well, this is true, as it is indeed for almost everyone in his position, and the OP acknowledges it, of course. Here I can't agree at all: it seems to me that unlike many others in his kind of situation regarding trading, the OP is considerably more perceptive and self-aware, and has a lot more judgment regarding what's necessary and realistic to progress further. From the thoughtful and intelligent nature of his interactions here, I'd back the OP in preference to most members not currently trading for a living, anyway. Again, that's not my own perspective, to be honest; I actually found the long learning process more "interesting", in most senses of the word, and the eventual outcome of doing the activity repeatedly for a living almost boring, by comparison. Trading is relatively easy, after all: it's learning how to do it in a stable, reliable, successful way that's the huge hurdle (for almost everyone, I think?).
Maybe. But OP seem to think he is special. He is using this thread like his Journal. Not sure why he doesn't just move it there. Seem to me he thinks his thread is somehow special.
People who post a thread online you take with a grain of salt...Esp if you don't know them. BUT, if there is even 5-10% take away from their thread I (you) can use, you take it and go with it. We may hate some of our family members. But if there is some truth they are saying about a situation, we need to be open to listen...See what truth is there, reject the rest. Same with trading...
As an even keeled rational person, what you said is fair. I wouldn't say I have 20 yrs of trading experience! I daytraded a little bit back in my prop days. Then I went back to Corporate America since then. There were long periods of many years where I did NO trading at all. Didn't follow markets. Didn't read about trading. Then a little in 2010/2011. Then again more actively since October 2015. So there were 3 distinct periods of active trading that last a few years each. So over the last 20 years, I might had a total of 6 years of "active" trading. Some of it was daytrade some of it was swing trading. It wasn't like I had 6 full years of screen time of daytrading. Having said all of that, you are right about the development state. I was repeating the same mistakes and biases for a long time. Called it insanity/bad habits or whatever. But nowadays, it's a new day. Definitely feels very different. I would say it wasn't until about a month ago that I was able to get rid of many of the bad behavioral and cognitive biases I had about markets and trading. This fundamental shift also coincide with my new discipline about getting up early every single morning to do cardio, or yoga, or strength training. This exercise discipline and consistency seem to have a fundamental shift in making my good trading habits stable and prevalent. The big 3 hurdles I achieved in the last month or so: 1) Got rid of countertrend bias. Stop shorting rising markets and stop long falling markets 2) Cutting losses faster 3) My biggest breakthrough is being able to distinguish between a countertrend trade and a REVERSAL trade. That is I know when a reversal is emerging and go reverse rather than blindly countertrend trading. It helped me this morning. Reversal trades have better odds than countertrend trades. I even smiled now when I see where I would countertrend and get killed in the past. I recognize it and don't enter that spot. This is a very fair opportunity cost question. Given my education credentials, skills, and professional experience, looking at pure ROI perspective trading has been vastly negative experience up to now. To address that opportunity cost question, I'm currently pursuing several non-trading business ventures in addition to my non-trading biz I've discussed here. They are in the works and utilize other more obvious talents and skills I have. My days are highly scheduled, productive, and optimized. Strangely enough, I don't feel stressed about it. I feel a sense of contentment that I'm using my time on this earth productively. And I don't work any more hours than before. Just more efficient and producing more results. Given recent improvements, I think I'll probably make more progress in the next year than all the prior years experience COMBINED. Because there's a fundamental shift in thinking and seeing of markets. @Xela wrote, "Again, that's not my own perspective, to be honest; I actually found the long learning process more "interesting", in most senses of the word, and the eventual outcome of doing the activity repeatedly for a living almost boring, by comparison. Trading is relatively easy, after all: it's learning how to do it in a stable, reliable, successful way that's the huge hurdle (for almost everyone, I think?)." I agree and really appreciate @Xela perspective and support here. The actual mechanics of trading is rather simple and boring. Once you have an edge, you just execute it day in , day out. In fact, on days when I do well because the market unfolds exactly in the patterns that I expected, then there's almost nothing to do. Just sit back and execute in and out. It's almost boring. But it is the training to obtain mastery that's "interesting". You should strive to learn trading in the most stable and least damaging fashion. Maybe a lot of people here on ET are single male and have not many financial obligations. If you have a mortgage and family then learning to trade and relying trading as your sole source of income would be exremely stressful and damaging to the learning process. It takes time to master anything. And mastery is a continuous process. Kind of like George Leonard's concept in his book on Mastery here: No one strategy will last forever. So one has to constantly develop and observe new patterns and add them in one's toolkit. In the long run, I'll try to automate so that I can work and trade at the same time. Maximize both opportunity sets. In meantime, a full-time consulting/job is the easiest six figure source of income. This is the concept from Steven Pavlina's blog post here: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2017/09/easiest-income-stream/ Hopefully soon, trading on the side will be yet another easy source of income.
Anyways...my main point was why are you even telling me this. I don't care. Like I don't care to share you my own day to day trading experience. That is how I know you are more on the developmental state then mastery stage. And PS it's kind of obvious that during the developmental state one would expect you get the highest rate or change. For the reason that there was a lot that needed to be change. So it makes sense that you would be making a lot of change. If you get what I mean. At the mastery stage the changes are smaller because there's very little that need to be changed.
Another update. Just finished up with another client's work. So some lull time before starting another project. Time between client's projects was a week last time. It's nice to have these breaks before diving in again. So last few days I traded actively again on both sim and my real money account. On sim account, I was consistently making $1K-$3K a day without too much efforts. On my real account it was profitably but much less since I was only trading 1 lot vs 5-6 lots on the sim. I really want to scratch this itch. Should I hold off on picking up another client's project for a month? Just to see if I focus on this actively can I consistently make $1K-$3K a day for a month? I know a month is not a long track record. But it's not so much about the money. But process and thinking that went into it. I have become a much better trader... My conservative side tells me to pick up another client project so I don't have to worry about money. And continue to trade an hour in the morning. If that goes well then scale up. My risk-taking side tells me now is the time to be confident and really test my edge. Daytrade for at least a half a day to see how well you are doing. Hold off on picking up another client project. A month isn't going to kill you. But without a steady cash flow I might feel pressured and trade not as well. That's another angle to consider. Or maybe given the longer time period to trade I get more opportunities to execute my edge and make more or lose more. Hmmm...
I can't give you general trading advice, but I am qualified to say there's a ton of wisdom in working your trading business part time for 6 months minimum (preferably 12 months or more) while you have the safety and comfort of your other job. It's just good business sense, no matter how good a trader you are. Of course I'm old school, so i play it safe. Life is short, so if you can squeeze in that 1 to 2 hours of trading time, you will have fun and learn without pressure. Even trading 1 to 2 hours a day will allow you plenty of time to hone your skills.
A wise man (I think wise) once said... I'm patient. While I've been really consistent and improving steadily, I still feel I need to hammer down those good habits until it becomes automatic. I'm OK if it takes a few more months(maybe another year?) of practice to hone these good trading habits. I see this as a long-term skill development. The stability of consulting income can't be underestimated. It gives me peace of mind as I refine and refine and refine as I get better and better. A good criteria is if I make more than what I make in my consulting biz then I might consider doing FT. Right now, I'm not there yet. So no go. Improvements are great. But I want to prove to myself with real solid results. And I know those solid results are coming since I've been focusing on improving my process and trading habits. Once those are consistent, then it's just a matter of steadily scaling it up... That's the beauty of this game. One must have Patience to play the long game. Put the odds on your side. Not the odds stacked against oneself. The stress of not having a steady income source can put one's trading plan in danger. And we all know no matter how good you are there's always a losing streak lurking somewhere around the corner. It might not be a big losing streak if you control your losses. But it's added stress if you have expenses to meet. Play it safe. Unless I'm so consistent at making large sums of money on most days that it's actually costing me more to NOT trade... One day I'll get there..