downtickboy, you might as well give it up. You exemplify why trading doesn't work for most even if you are not losing. The trading arena is there to exploit so as to amass money. If you remove your gains for living costs no trader can amass a great pile of money. Once you have mastered your market you accumulate your gains and raise your betting stakes in line with capital accumulation (capital+gains) .. that is not news to anyone I am sure.
everytime you try to leave they will drag you right back in. 17 years now, once in a while i think about writing a book or something with some social redeeming quality, and then i realize that i don't really want to work a real job for a living.
My example above was to show that it does not take much to equal the performance of a fund manager and that a person trading their own money has to perform a lot better then the average money manager if they want to make any real money unless they are working with a large amount. My trading account is smaller then the example but my return is a lot higher. I know many people who mastered their market for 2-6 yrs and now their market is mastering them so I believe it is a moving target for the short term intraday trader. Those that think they have figured it all out usually have only figured it out over the short run and will eventually run into a tough point again in their trading. That is the high and lows of trading and it can change fast. I don't look at trading like a lot of the people I know who think it is ok to squeak by making 30-40k a year trading. I think a person who is experienced should be making a minimum on the low side of 100K a year to make it worthwhile as a career. Because if you are making 50K a year the next year you could make nothing or worse yet lose money. Divide 50K by 2 years and suddenly you are back at Mac Donalds wages but with more stress. There are plenty of interesting things out there with high reward and lower risk. IF you make 50K trading full time you can work for someone and get insurance on top of that with no risk. It does not make sense to me then to be trading full time. Although I have sort of got off topic myself. Anyway hopefully someone will have some suggestions based on the topic of the thread once Christmas is over. Hopefully this is not a sign of how much day trading can paint someone into a corner that is tough to get out of.
I have seen the results of this from traders who still are hoping to refigure out the market. Basically they were making money during bull markets -whether in stocks, fixed income, the euro, ect. Then for the last 2 years they have not made a dime and continue to bleed off what they previously made. They feel trapped because they don't know what else they even could do at this point. So they are banking on the fact that they will someday figure something out again that works. Too me that does not seem to be the most productive use of their money or time. Although I am no where near doing this, I think there are many other things I would like to do while continuing to trade part time. I think that is the best of both worlds.
downtick, the best fields with have to do with companies that rely heavily on logistics. Transportation, buying for retailers, security, etc. The greatest thing traders can bring to the table is the ability to think on the fly and see patterns emerging. It may not start of sexy but in time you can really become a giant assest to these type situations as a computer can't do a job such at Air Traffic Control. Just a thought good luck
Since you mentioned specific growth areas (TIC 1031), and titles like CIO (I am not sure if you mean chief investment officers, or chief information officers), I assume you have some idea as to what the "non-trading" career you want to pursue. First of all, to find any job, an introduction is at least 10x to 20x better than just applying (which you will have to go through HR, etc). A couple of words of advice, one, reduce your trading experience to be minimum necessary, most firms do not look kindly to that type of experience, since their inclination will be that you are just going through a rough patch, once you got hired and trained, you will go back to trading anyways, and that's a bad start to you getting in the door. I believe I am familiar enough with the general hiring practices, since I was a manager (actually was a CTO for a couple of years) for 10 years. Two, apologies for sounding general, but use words / phrases in your resume that are familiar to that industry, if I use "hedging" in my resume to a non-finance job, people will be scratching their heads as to what that means. Three, research the hiring firm and find out what they want, and tailor your resume for the opportunity. The general idea is that you have to submit a resume, make sure it goes through the HR keyword scan first. Now, you are face to face with the senior executive, you got yourself in the door, now what? A couple of general observations, one, short answers are generally bad, you want to get a flow going, interview is not an interrogation session. Let's say him/her ask a stoooopid question like "how well do you know commercial real estate", never answer "yes" or "no", be interactive, relate with a little story (not too long), a little story hopefully that goes back to more than a few years ago, the senior executives are generally impressed with candidates that have done their homework and have the depth of knowledge. Say things like "wow, I was interested back in the late 90s, and the Texas / NY / Chicago markets have exploded since 2000, but the CA market have stagnated ... but I think they are due for a come back" (now, I know next to nothing about commercial real estate, and it shows!), this way, it shows you have at least 5 years of knowledge, and have a keen interest in the market place. One more, prepare a few questions (that are not really questions) that if possible, goes to the heart of what the department want to accomplish, for instance, (apologies for using a finance example, but that's mostly what I know), "I heard that Morgan and Goldman have developed automated trading systems for govvies (government treasuries), Lehman (the firm you are interviewing with) is a big player in the treasury market, is Lehman also in the process of developing an autoated trading system?" This type of question takes a lot of guts (it is possible to blow an interview if you have showed their weakness), but again, it show insight, and it goes to the heart of what the firm is trying to do, again you know the landscape, but, be prepared for the challenging next question "Well, what type of automated trading system do *you* think Lehman should be developing, arb? hedging?", if you can ace the follow up question (again, story with analytical insight helps enormously here), the job is as good as yours. In other words, prepare, prepare, and then preapre some more, it is no different from being a very disciplined and aggressive trader. Good luck.
Somewhat relevant, naturally it only relates to finance jobs. http://news.efinancialcareers.com/NEWS_ITEM/newsItemId-3828
None, unless you want to be a broker. No one will pay you a salary (I suspect a salary you demand cause you are labelled as; 1) too independent 2) overqualified 3) not fit for corporate culture due to trading. Being a broker maybe good for these reasons; 1) no one will fire you if you have 400 clients only 1,2 will leave but you can get new ones 2) still do what you know and have more of a relaxed life.
I will probably be taking a cut back pay wise at first but I expected that. As long is there is a trade off for potential and a learning experience I am fine with that. There is always a way in. I have already had a lot of interested firms just based on resumes and cover letters sent to the right people. I just need to transition the opportunities during the interview. If someone sits down they can probably find lot of ways to explain their trading career in way that would be interesting if not be over the heads of someone outside of the business. I think it can come off as being impressive especially if you have fixed income and currency trading experience in which usually a better understand of fundamentals is needed. The key will be explaining how you can apply and transition those abilites in way that would interest to another firm. As far as the broker I would not find that interesting especially the heavy sales side of that. If someone is on the fence out there maybe this thread will get them to think about their choices a little more. Outside of a couple of posts it would seem that most see a big difficulty in figuring it out how someone would get out of trading once they get into it unless you have some previous work experience doing something else you can fall back on. Obviously no one thinks they will not be in the small percent that will continue to make good money every year consistently or they probably would not get into it in the first place. But it is something to think about.