Hi Guys, Thanks for the various advices. They are all good. I've thought about things and here's what happened and my options. Let me give some context before you guys rain down on me about not keeping a corporate job for less than a year. There were some serious political backstabbing, setting up to fail, and plain jealousy. I came in probably at the top of the pay bracket for my role. The reason I know this is I was in management and in senior management meetings we discussed a lot of roles salaries. They were significantly lower than mine. So, expectations were HIGH. Jealousy were HIGH. But, my mistakes in hindsight, I treated as just another job since this pay was the same or slightly lower than my last job. But for this company I was coming in high and there were probably enemies all around ready to take me down. Hindsight. Then there's new management. They hired a new boss to run our group. He wanted to go in totally different directions and make a lot of changes. I guess I'm not part of his agenda. Lastly, there were personality clashes between my employees(people whom I managed). And I didn't take care of it until it blew up in my face. I thought that just giving a small talk to them to correct their behaviors would be enough. Apparently not. I will OWN that fault. At the exit interview, HR mentioned I have great technical skills but my management skills were lacking. With that feedback, it made sense. HR also said it's due to dept restructuring and the new boss wanted to do different things. Fair enough. I've been in Corporate America long enough and been through enough of these cycles that I didn't react much. I politely nodded and signed the necessary paperwork. Took my package and left. As to next steps, I can do the following: 1) Respond to the many back emails of recruiters hounding me for the last few months about various roles. I never responded to them because I was already employed and "happy" in my job. Fortunately, I work in a hot in-demand area of tech. But unfortunately, I have geographically constraints due to family being here. Also learning from experience, I need to find the "right" company culture and role. E.g. less politics and backstabbing. Also not sure how many of those roles are still available. 2) Get a remote job so I can work from home. Trade a little bit in the morning. Have flexibility to take my child to various activities and classes. That to me is the best option. Let's keep my fingers crossed if such a role opens up. 3) Do consulting on-site. An old boss of mine who gave me glowing recommendation to land this job wanted me to do consulting for his current company. But I took this job instead since it was a FT role with benefits. He and I worked well. I don't mind working for him again even if it's just on a consulting basis. I would enjoy that. Not sure if his company is still looking for such a role since it was 6 months ago. 4) Do remote consulting. I'm trying to land a remote contract. I know someone who was interested in it but I need to jump through a few hoops to get it. 5) Build up my entire consulting practices since I have one client now. The per hour pay is high but volume and steadiness is low. But it's a start... 6) I also considered teaching more online tech courses. I have developed a MOOC like course that I have received decent reception but the volume of customers it too low to make a living. But it's on autopilot so every once in a while I get a student sign up for my course. Ka-ching. So I could be building more online courses. In fact, the platform just requested I build more courses for them. So promising. But I would need SIGNIFICANT SCALE in order for this to be viable. But it will be one of my many sources of income. I think if I have 10 popular courses then it would be a nice residual income. 7) Trading on the side. I would NEVER do this FT. Just too risky given my situation. I have given up on that fantasy. I realize if I'm careful and prudent I can make a little here and there everyday and it would add up to an OK side supplemental income. I have too much valuable tech skills to be staring at the screens all day in hope of making something. So, I'll try everything above and see what sticks. Ideally, I would do multiple options. I don't believe in single source of income anymore. It can be taken away from you on a whim. Wish me luck! Thanks!
I've worked in several very large companies, multinationals, and the higher you go the more brutal it seems to get. The pressure rises, meetings, pace of work, hours, expectations, emails, accountability, the back stabbing... I'm retired now and all I can say is "what a relief". Over my working life, sacked a few times, made redundant a few times and I have walked out with very little to no notice some times. I've been kicked out the door with like 5 minutes notice and likewise I have given bosses the same. As you may believe, I'm not an easy guy to get along with, yes and no. I was raised a bit like a bogan, scrappy and a bit shifty, but if you put your nose to it one can pull themselves up by their bootlaces. Trading, it's just perseverance. Write lots of notes, you will soon get your shit together. Be methodical, protect your capital, don't be hasty to place trades, trade small at first. Once it starts coming together you will notice the upward curve begins to increase. Finally. I wish you luck. Luck does pay a part.
Here's the update: Jobwise: I've been doing some side consulting. And hopefully soon back to a Corporate job. In October til now, I didn't even really looked. I was so sick and tired of Corporate America that I didn't even apply or reply to many recruiters call. I guess I was still recovering. Now I'm ready again. And guess what? I'm getting bunch of calls. Funny how the universe works. When you are ready then things just show up. When you are not ready or refuse to then the universe does not manifest anything. Not to be New Age psycho-babble. But I kind of believe you create your own reality by your actions,inactions,beliefs, etc. Trading: I've made some improvements and have had many $1k+ days! This is the right direction. But I need to improve on cutting losses faster. I have to end this vicious cycle of booms and bust. Make a lot of money then lose a lot of money. My losses have to be very small relative to my winners. Catching and riding a good downtrend is no problem for me. Yesterday(12/29/2017) on one of the slowest trading day of the year I made $1400! I shorted NQ futures near the open and got out near the low of the day toward the close! It was a beautiful trade! Too bad I only had 1 lot on. Multiple lots would have been nice. I also got in NG futures during a pullback but then it went against me. I got out for a small $100 loss. Good. I need to keep that habit of keeping losses small. But then again there are days where I held onto stupid losses for too long thinking it will come back. I need to create and follow strict exit rules. I just did a quick math in Excel. If i just cap my losses to a fix amount then in December I would have made 6x what I've made! It's not cutting losses short that is killing me! That's the flicker of hope. As I've written previously here on ET in other posts, back in 2001-2003 was my first foray into daytrading. In 2000, I was in a high paying dotcom job. When the dotcom imploded I got so sick of Corporate America that I wanted to do something different. So I went to prop trading. Back then there were still no deposits prop trading. I didn't know sh*t. Never could make $1K a day easily like nowadays. After "wasting" 3 years, I gladly went back to Corporate America. Got a decent job and steadily move back up. Went to grad school. Then after grad school school every year got even better pay. Now here I am again. A chance to give another crack at daytrading. I'm in much better financial shape than back in 2001-2003. I know a lot more. But I also have more responsibilities. Mortgage and a kid. My rational side say to do consulting or FT job. And trade on the side. A path of least risk. My emotional side say you are so close to cracking this. If I just put some more efforts in fixing my errors then I could easily make well over $1K a day. That would be more than my Corporate job. With trading there will be no benefits, salary increases, bonuses. I have to make well over $1K a day to make it worth it given the risk and instability of trading. Let's see how things go. I don't want to make the mistake of giving up when I'm 5 feet from success. Yet at the same time, maybe I'm not 5 feet but a mile away from being a consistently profitable trader. what are your thoughts?
One humble opinion from a mom and pop retail trader: If you can set yourself up so you can trade without emotion, you will be yards ahead. For me it meant I did not need trading profits to put food on the table but could live on savings alone for a while. At that point the emotions of fear and greed were a lot less and results became better. Best wishes for 2018.
ironchef - Thank you for your best wishes. I totally agreed with your idea of not needing trading profits to put food on the table! I need to provide some context. By luck or preplanning, apparently I have prepaid my mortgages all this time so I'm good for an entire year! That means I don't need to pay another mortgage payment until January 2019! I feel very fortunate to having pay a little extra every month all these years so that in times when I'm off the job market I don't have to worry for a while. That's one huge financial obligations I don't have to worry for at least a year. Of course, I have other bills that come monthly in addition to my mortgage. For those, about half of them are covered through my other fixed income streams. So luck would have it, I would only need to make enough to cover half of the monthly expenses. Hopefully through my side consulting and other gigs. Somehow the universe set this up for me. I'm in much better shape financially than I was back in 2001-2003. And I know a lot more about trading and markets. There are two ways to look at this: 1) Corporate mindset: In this standard perspective, it's extremely risky. In my normal corporate job, I would not only pay all of my bills, I would have savings stashed away every month, 401K contributions for my retirement, and spending money for fun. Doing trading full-time even in the best of situation like now would look like a huge step back financially and careerwise. What an idiot! Go back to a full-time Corporate Job safety! 2) Trading mindset: Wow! Lucky you! Through luck or careful planning, I'm set up not to worry financially as much as back in 2001-2003 when I did daytrading FT for the first time. And now I know a lot more. I just need a few tweaks to improve. This is your chance. If I can't make enough money to cover at least half of my expenses, then I really shouldn't be trading FT! But if I can and continue to improve who knows in one year(january 2019) maybe I will become good enough to exceed my old corporate job salary! And achieve the financial and time freedom I always wanted. So I wonder which mindset will win over these next 12 months..
Trap. Don't fall for the trap your mind is laying for you. I see your words, and that is your head messing with you. Your advice is within you, past your mind. Just listen. :-|
So what is your suggestion? It's unclear. Go back to a normal 9 to 5 Corporate job or do trading with consulting on the side? Obviously the ultimate is up to me. I'm not sure the context of your head is messing with you. And you quote the trading mindset option. This seems to imply that trading is messing with my head and tricking me to do it?
You should trade. Scale up. You'll make more money than any corporate job. If you don't, one day you will come to regret it.
I consider the psychological part of trading as just as important if not equal or more with the systematic side of trading. Things like risk control, mentality, money pressure, family pressure, psychological issues, debt, etc can make or break a trader. You sound like you have issue on the psychological side. Trading is in part like being an athlete. The rules of sports are pretty clear cut. But that doesn't mean everyone can play it competitively. Just a little food for thought. And as a rule of thumb. If you have to ask ET for advice, the probability is good that you are not close. I would take the 9-5 job but that's just my opinion. Either options has their pros and cons as you point out.
Keep your corporate job and trade on the side. You will make more money and have more spiritual fulfillment. Trading stimulates the same parts of your brain as sex and gambling. It feels fun but it's better to keep it as a hobby.