I know downtick and he has worked long and hard and traveled far to become a succesful trader. There is nothing in the world wrong with moving on. Read the year ending stats in Barrons this weekend, its nothing but boxes/ hedgies and us swingin it out day after day for net tiny changes in indexes,,, pretty lame if you ask me. There is a guy not to far from here who owns a small sub shop. It does a ton of business and the dude is always smiling,,, who knows..... I bet alot of ventures will be easy from people coming from this racket. Good luck downtick
it seems u cannot understand what u read at all; your local business incentive program can cover your costs so u don't have to put down a dime. that's what a Portuguese fella friend of mine has done last year and he's now close to repay his debts, and his restaurant is very successful. Same can be said for opening a small shop, that anyways doesn't require enormous amounts of capital; and by the way downticknoy has never implied he's either broke or tired of making money.
It seems you're assuming all countries operate the same. Where in the US are there local business incentive programs that cover the costs of opening a new restuarant while not requiring the business owner putting down a dime?? Give me a list of cities. No, just name one. LOL DTB never implied he was broke. But he implied if he made $50K one year and nothing the next, he'd be making only $25K, which is equiavalent of McDonald's wages. He's the one who implied that situation. If he were doing extremely well, I don't think he would had brought that scenario up.
Every state in the usa offer plenty of incentives for financing, planning and training and u can get special loans at very low interest repayment. My friend didn't get free money but a loan that he can repay in a number of years. The usa won't grant u money but certainly will lend u something in order to help u getting started. Still, what's wrong with exploiting opportunities oversea?
I have a friend that hit the market at the right period and did decent for a few years 200-500K but hated everyday he traded. He was only doing it because he knew he could not do anything else that made that kind of money. Now that those outsized gains have disappeared for him for the last 1.5-2 yrs he is moving on to something he likes. I see that in many business people too who hate what they are doing but don't do something else because they are making too much. For 500-1 million I think anyone would continue to do trade. If that goes to 50-60K then someone who is educated or has the right opportunites can do many things they might like better with lower risk and higher upside potential. However I understand what you were saying about the market playing tricks with your mind as I have experienced that in the past. This whole decision has not happened over night. I have been thinking about it for the past 2 years, figuring out what else I might want to do, talking to people in other businesses, and basically making sure I was not making an emotional decision.
You read to much into my examples as I was only making a point. I have never made less then 40K on a bad year after my first year of trading. My good years were way more then this. The marginally years were in between. This even included a time at a prop futures firm where I made much more then that in the market but had to give up the prop split. However except for the good years the amount I made was never consistently at a point where I considered it worth the risk and at an amount that I originally got into trading for. I did not get into it to make 50-60K. I know the bad year or two can always be right around the corner where I could make nothing. I have seen a lot of changes in trading and changes in market conditions that have both helped some traders and destroyed other traders who had been extremely successful up to that point. I for see some more of those changes coming. If someone wants to say then those people were not real traders then so be it. There are tons of hedge funds and mutual funds that go from widely successful to losing money too depending on changes in the market conditions. Besides being interested in some other activities and fields I want to move to a longer term time frame anyway. I don't need to be sitting at a computer everyday daytrading for that. Like I said earlier best of both worlds. I have a plan for where I want to be and where I want to go just like a trader should have a trading plan. I already know where I want to go, where I want to be in 5 years, what field I want to get into, the position I want, and I am taking the steps to get there.
Thanks steelhead for the compliments. I too think traders who have managed to make money for a few years in trading have the characteristics to be able to be widely successful in other ventures by applying the same time, effort, and disipline they have developed and used with trading. I believe if some has been able to make money with trading for a few years they have succeeded in one of the toughest businesses and can easily succeed in many other areas.
Slacker - Do you trade full time? I love trading overall, just hated the corporate BS that came with working for someone. I need to find a way to get over the loss of security I thought I had. TIM
Japanese real estate market might be worth looking at soon. It has had a steady decline every year for 16 years and looks to be putting in a bottom.
downtickboy: As a guy who abruptly left a lucrative career in computer programming to become a full-time daytrader, I can offer you this sage advice: DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND THE MONEY WILL FOLLOW. Yes, it's a bit worn out--that saying, but it's totally true. I used to believe that the money was what made it worthwhile for me to continue working in the IT departments of large companies, but I finally realized that no amount of money (not even in the millions) could make me do a job I hate, day in and day out. Now, here's the practical advice: what I did in order to transition over to trading can be your way back to the "real job" path: consulting. The first thing I did when I quit my full-time job was start a little consulting corporation to do pretty much the same thing as I had done as an employee, but with these significant, happy advantages: 1) no boss! 2) flexible schedule 3) higher hourly rate You'll be able to add one advantage to the list if you start out as a consultant: 4) Building a resume without having to convince a manager to hire you as an full-time employee. One would think that it would be harder to convince a hiring manager to hire you at a higher hourly rate with a resume as thin as yours may seem to be, but the funny thing is that NO ONE EVER ASKED TO SEE MY RESUME WHEN I WAS A CONSULTANT. The decision to hire me was always made on two factors: 1) word-of-mouth recommendations, and 2) in-person interviews. I have no trouble getting consulting work in programming thanks to a network of happy clients. So, you might be wondering: "how am I going to build a network of happy clients when I don't have years and years of experience to consult with?" Well, I've found that successful consulting has very little to do with technical expertise in your professed area of consulting. It almost entirely depends on achieving customer satisfaction. Sure, customer satisfaction depends to some degree on your ability to get the job done, but it really comes down to listening to what the customer REALLY wants and delivering it. For example: most clients of mine aren't actually looking for a computer whiz. They are really looking for a short-term, results-oriented project manager. The actual work might be 10% computer programming and 90% making the right phone calls and lining up the right resources. Translation: they actually want entrepreneurial skills on-demand, and since traders are usually entrepreneurial in nature, this will come easily to you. Now, here's the benefit to you: while you are actually using the entrepreneurial skills you already have, you are able to write down something more useful to you on your resume: "completed XYZ project worth $$$ dollars," making you look like you have the technical skills portion of your profession. Eventually, you'll be able to snag a job based on these credentials; either you'll already have gained the requisite technical abilities via your consulting, schooling, or independent studying, or you'll be able to learn on-the-job with your new position. (The trick is of course to aim a bit lower, where your resume full of expert consulting experience will make you a shoe-in but you'll get a chance to pick up the skills you need to advance to higher positions later.) Good luck. The ability to switch back and forth between self-employment and employee is a fantastically-useful one. Still, these are not abilities that lead one to PASSIVE income. You should consider the advice of other responders to invest your money so that it works for you. Personally, I plan on buying a few laundromats or automated businesses so that I can trade for fun and not for income.